United States or Pitcairn Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I am wistful in him of the hand of Destiny, and he will succeed in this undertaking if he dareth it. Shibli Bagarag cried, 'At thy bidding, O Noorna! Care I for dangers? I'm on fire to wield the Sword, and master the Event. Thereupon, Noorna bin Noorka arose instantly, and took him by the cheeks a tender pinch, and praised him.
Now, when he was in the presence, he exclaimed, 'Peace, O vendor of apparel, unto thee and unto thine! Shagpat answered, 'That with thee! Said Shibli Bagarag, 'I have heard of thee, O thou wonder! Wullahy! I am here to render homage to that I behold. Shagpat answered, ''Tis well! Then said Shibli Bagarag, 'Praise my discretion!
Then the seven youths and the Princess and Shibli Bagarag got up under its feathers like a brood of water-fowl; and the bird winged straight up as doth a blinded bee, ascending, and passing in the ascent a widening succession of winding terraces, till he observed the copper sun of Aklis and the red lands below it.
And Shibli Bagarag winked and nodded and turned his head in the manner of the knowing ones, and he recited the verse: 'Tis well that we are sometimes circumspect, And hold ourselves in witless ways deterred: One thwacking made me seriously reflect; A SECOND turned the cream of love to curd: Most surely that profession I reject Before the fear of a prospective THIRD.
Truly the ways of Allah are wonderful! Shibli Bagarag resisted him in nothing, and Abarak loosed the two bright hairs from his wrist, and those two hairs swelled and took glittering scales, and were sapphire snakes with wings of intense emerald; and they rose in the air spirally together, each over each, so that to see them one would fancy in the darkness a fountain of sapphire waters flashed with the sheen of emerald.
Then he laughed a loud laugh, but Abarak sobbed, saying, 'By this know I that I never should have seized the Sword, even though I had vanquished the illusions of Rabesqurat, which held me fast half-way. So Shibli Bagarag stared at him, and said, 'Wert thou also a searcher, O Abarak? But Abarak cried, 'Rouse not the talkative tongue of the past, O youth!
While they sat there conversing in this metre and that, measuring quotations, lo! the old woman, the affianced of Shibli Bagarag and she sumptuously arrayed, in perfect queenliness, her head bound in a circlet of gems and gold, her figure lustrous with a full robe of flowing crimson silk; and she wore slippers embroidered with golden traceries, and round her waist a girdle flashing with jewels, so that to look on she was as a long falling water in the last bright slant of the sun.
He said nought, but as the boat's-head whispered among the reeds and long flowers of the opposite marge, he took Shibli Bagarag by the shoulders and pushed him out of the boat, and leaped out likewise, leading him from the marge forcibly, hurrying him forward from it, he at the heels of the youth propelling him; and crying in out-of-breath voice at intervals, 'What sight? what sight? But the youth was powerless of speech, and when at last he opened his lips, the little man shrank from him, for he laughed as do the insane, a peal of laughter ended by gasps; then a louder peal, presently softer; then a peal that started all the echoes in Aklis.
But, as he soared aloft to renew the fight with Noorna, Shibli Bagarag loosed to her aid the Slaves of the Sword, and Abarak marked him slope to a distant corner of earth, and reascend in a cloud, which drew swiftly over the land toward the Great Hall. Lo, Shibli Bagarag stepped from it through a casement of the Hall, and with him Shagpat, a slack weight, mated out of all power of motion.
He observed Shibli Bagarag attentively a moment, and exclaimed as it were in the plenitude of respect and with the manner of one that is abashed, 'Surely, thou art Shibli Bagarag, the nephew of the barber, him we watch for. So Shibli Bagarag marvelled at this recognition, and answered, 'Am I then already famous to that extent?
Word Of The Day