SCENE IV.
Zaide, Fatima.
Zai.
My husband means to celebrate this day
With high festivity; and to adorn
My person (beauteous to his partial eyes),
Bade me, with all this gold, buy pearls and jewels!
Yet a thought strikes me. 'Tis, I'm sure, a project
Would please my lord. But hark—I hear a noise—
'Tis that relentless Kaled, with his slaves,
Arrang'd below.—I cannot view those wretches—
I cannot listen to their clanking chains!
Let us retire, and I will tell thee all.
Fatima
(loitering behind).
SONG.
1
Now, what silly fancy or idle caprice, is
Just hatch'd in my mistress's brain, I can't guess!
All I know is—I wish I had so many pieces:
Heigho! I would buy such a beautiful dress.
2
O! then I would deck me all over with pearls,
And to turban of diamond solicit applause,
And, as envy or jealousy fired all the girls,
My bosom would pant till it kindled the gauze.
3
And then from my locks a profusion of musk
Should drop, like Arabia distilling perfumes;
And amidst its cool shadows when evening grew dusk,
And the aloes burnt bright to illumine the rooms,
4
I would join in the dance, and to frolicksome measures
Would trip it away, like the antelope nimble;
While mirth's antic train and the rosy-lipp'd pleasures
In rapture should bound to the strokes of the cymbal.
