C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

’Umar ibn Rabí’a: The Unveiled Maid

From ‘Love Poems’: Translation of William Gifford Palgrave

IN the valley of Mohassib I beheld her where she stood:

Caution bade me turn aside, but love forbade and fixed me there.

Was it sunlight? or the windows of a gleaming mosque at eve,

Lighted up for festal worship? or was all my fancy’s dream?

Ah, those earrings! ah, that necklace! Naufel’s daughter sure the maid,

Or of Hashim’s princely lineage, and the Servant of the Sun!

But a moment flashed the splendor, as the o’er-hasty handmaids drew

Round her with a jealous hand the jealous curtains of the tent.

Speech nor greeting passed between us; but she saw me, and I saw

Face the loveliest of all faces, hands the fairest of all hands.

Daughter of a better earth, and nurtured by a brighter sky;

Would I ne’er had seen thy beauty! Hope is fled, but love remains.