Indignant at
this answer, Syd Omri returns home, and after his friends had in vain
tried the effect of love-philtres to make Layla's father relent, as a
last resource they propose that Majnun should wed another damsel, upon
which the demented lover once more seeks the desert, where they again
find him almost at the point of death, and bring him back to his tribe.
[117] Nothing is more hackneyed in Asiatic poetry than the
comparison of a pretty girl's face to the moon, and not
seldom to the disparagement of that luminary. Solomon,
in his love-songs, exclaims: "Who is she that looketh
forth in the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the
sun?" The greatest of Persian poets, Firdausi, says of a
damsel:
"Love ye the moon? Behold her face,
And there the lucid planet trace."
And Kalidasa, the Shakspeare of India (6th century
B.C.), says:
"Her countenance is brighter than the moon."
Amongst ourselves the epithet "moon-faced" is not usually
regarded as complimentary, yet Spenser speaks of a
beautiful damsel's "moon-like forehead."--Be sure, the
poets are right!
[118] The lithe figure of a pretty girl is often likened by
Eastern poets to the waving cypress, a tree which we
associate with the grave-yard.
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