I love her madly for she is perfect fair, ✿ Complete in gravity and gracious way; Nor over-tall nor over-short, the while ✿ Too full for trousers are those hips that sway: Her shape is midmost ’twixt o’er small and tall; ✿ Nor long to blame nor little to gainsay: O’erfall her anklets tresses black as night ✿ Yet in her face resplends eternal day.
The King seeing her marvelled at her beauty and loveliness, her symmetry and perfect grace and said to the merchant, “O Shaykh, how much for this maiden?” Replied the merchant, “O my lord, I bought her for two thousand dinars of the merchant who owned her before myself, since when I have travelled with her three years and she hath cost me, up to the time of my coming hither, other three thousand gold pieces; but she is a gift from me to thee.” The King robed him with a splendid robe of honour and ordered him ten thousand ducats, whereupon he kissed his hands, thanking him for his bounty and beneficence, and went his ways. Then the King committed the damsel to the tire-women, saying, “Amend ye the case of this maiden[304] and adorn her and furnish her a bower and set her therein.” And he bade his chamberlains carry her everything she needed and shut all the doors upon her. Now his capital wherein he dwelt, was called the White City and was seated on the sea-shore; so they lodged her in a chamber, whose latticed casements overlooked the main.——And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying her permitted say.
Now when it was the Seven Hundred and Thirty-ninth Night,