In the Molasses Belt is a city called Sugarcane City In it lived two friends, a weaver and a carpenter. Since they were past masters in their respective crafts, they had earned enough money by their labors so that they kept no account of receipt and expenditure. They wore soft, gaily colored, expensive garments, adorned themselves with flowers and betel-leaves, and diffused odors of camphor, aloes, and musk. They worked nine hours a day, after which they adorned their persons and met for recreation in such places as public squares or temples. They made the rounds of the spots where society gathered—theaters, conversaziones, birthday parties, banquets, and the like—then went home at twilight. And so the time passed.

One day there was a great festival, an occasion when the entire population, wearing the finest ornaments that each could afford, began sauntering through the temples of the gods and other public places. The weaver and the carpenter, like the rest, put on their best things, and in squares and courtyards inspected the faces of people dressed to kill. And they caught a glimpse of a princess seated at the window of a stucco palace. The vicinity of her heart was made lovely by a firm bosom with the curve of early youth. Below the slender waist was the graceful swell of the hips. Her hair was black as a rain-cloud, soft, glossy, with a billowy curl. A golden earring danced below an ear that seemed a hammock where love might swing. Her face had the charm of a new-blown, tender water-lily. Like a dream she took captive the eyes of all; as she sat surrounded by girl friends.

And the weaver, ravished by lavish loveliness, since the love-god with five fierce arrows pierced his heart, concealed his feelings by a supreme effort of resolution, and tottered home, seeing nothing but the princess in the whole horizon. With long-drawn, burning sighs he tumbled on the bed (though it had not been made up), and there he lay. He perceived, he thought of nothing but her, just as he had seen her, and there he lay, reciting poetry:

Virtues with beauty dwell:

So poets sing

This contradiction not

Considering:

That she, so cruel-sweet,

Far, far apart,

Tortures my body still,

Still in my heart.

Or does this explain it?

One heart my darling took;

One pines as if to die;

One throbs with feeling pure:

How many hearts have I?

And yet

If all the world from virtue draws

A blessing and a gain,

Why should all virtue in my maid,

My fawn-eyed maiden, pain?

Each guards his home, they say;

Yet in my heart you stay,

Burning your home alway,

Sweet, heartless one!

That these—her bosom’s youthful pride,

Her curling hair, her sinuous side,

Her blood-red lip, her waist so small—

Should hurt me, is not strange at all:

But that her cheeks so clear, so bright,

Should torture me, is far from right.

Her bosom, like an elephant’s brow,

Swells, saffron-scented.