Note 215 — THE LOVES OF AL-HAYFA AND YUSUF.[177]

[I read this line: “Fí Hayyi-kum Taflatun|háma ’l-Fawádu bi-há (Basít)” and translate: In your clan there is a maiden of whom my heart is enamoured. In the beginning of the next line the metre requires “tazakkarat,” which therefore refers to “Aghsun,” not to the speaker: “the branches remember (and by imitating her movements show that they remember) the time when she bent aside, and her bending, graceful beyond compare, taught me that her eyes kept watch over the rose of her cheek and knew how to protect it from him who might wish to cull it.” This little gem of a Mawwál makes me regret that so many of the snatches of poetry in this MS. are almost hopelessly corrupted.—St.]