Then Al-Hayfa responded to him in the same rhyme and measure and spake to him as follows,

“O thou who dealest in written line * Whose nature hiding shall
     e’er decline;
And subdued by wine in its mainest might * Like lover drunken by
     strains divine,[FN#216]
Do thou gaze on our garden of goodly gifts * And all manner
     blooms that in wreaths entwine;
See the birdies warble on every bough * Make melodious music the
     finest fine. 
And each Pippet pipes[FN#217] and each Curlew cries * And
     Blackbird and Turtle with voice of pine;
Ring-dove and Culver, and eke Hazar, * And Kata calling on Quail
     vicine;
So fill with the mere and the cups make bright * With bestest
     liquor, that boon benign;—­
This site and sources and scents I espy * With Rizwan’s garden
     compare defy.”

And when Al-Hayfa had ended her improvisation and what she had spoken to him of poetry, and Yusuf had given ear to the last couplet, he was dazed and amazed and he shrieked aloud and waxed distraught for her and for the women that were beside and about her, and after the cry he fell fainting to the ground.  But in an hour[FN#218] he came to, when the evening evened and the wax candles and the chandeliers were lighted, his desire grew and his patience flew and he would have risen to his feet and wandered in his craze but he found no force in his knees.  So he feared for himself and he remained sitting as before.—­And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased saying her permitted say.  Then quoth her sister Dunyazad, “How sweet and tasteful is thy tale, O sister mine, and how enjoyable and delectable!” Quoth she, “And where is this compared with that I would relate to you on the coming night an the Sovran suffer me to survive?” Now when it was the next night and that was

The Six Hundred and Seventy-eighth Night,

Dunyazad said to her, “Allah upon thee, O my sister, an thou be other than sleepy, finish for us thy tale that we may cut short the watching of this our latter night!” She replied, “With love and good will!” It hath reached me, O auspicious King, the director, the right-guiding, lord of the rede which is benefiting and of deeds fair-seeming and worthy celebrating, that when Yusuf remained sitting as before, Al-Hayfa asked him saying, “How art thou hight, O dearling of my heart and fruit of my vitals?” Here-upon he told her his name and the name of his sire, and related to her the whole of what had befallen him, first and last, with the affair of the concubine and his faring forth from his own city and how he had sighted her Palace and had swum the stream and shot the shaft that carried the paper, after which he recited to her these couplets,