35-36. La doncella moribunda

We open this section with two versions of a mourning song for a young maiden. The first version, from Rhodes, retains a rather complete text: “Like a rose in the 53 garden and the flowers not yet open, so is a young girl at the time of her death. Grace and gaze, she used to sit at my side, her hand on her heart. I am young in age, I have not known the world, I wanted to live, for I had not yet accomplished. In the saddest hours in the day she got ill, like a queen on her bed, she fainted and fell. Open doors and windows, whoever saw her cried on seeing such an angel die.” The second version, from Istanbul, consists of only one strophe, a variant of the last strophe of the first version: “Open doors and windows to let out my pain — this pain of my soul that I cannot resist.”