Ode IV: Umamah has become tongue-tied, and will

Umamah has become tongue-tied, and will not speak a word to me : is she gone mad, or has she been taking counsel with the folk of Kharrub ?

She passed by the rider of a camel branded in the angle of the lower jaw, and he counselled her — ' Vex al-Jumaih, and assail him with annoyances.'

But if she had hit the truth, she would have said — for she is a truth-speaker — ' As for trying to train the grey-headed, trouble not thyself therewith ;

'His full age forbids it, and there forbids it the fact that your aged husband will never now submit to blows and schooling.'

But when she attacks me, then is she a [lioness] with whelps, short haired, that defends her brake so that it cannot be approached :

But if anything happens to terrify her, then is she like a child in a smock, whom thou chidest all day long, [threatening it] with the terror of the wolf.

And if her people be dwellers in Qidah, then my folk are they who dwell in Malhub.

[All this happened] when she saw that among my camels were few that yielded milk, and every year that passed over them was a year of dried-up udders.

The changes and chances of things — and they follow close upon my beasts — , and the payment of things due, have left them a little herd with a herdsman who is not overwhelmed by his charge ;

Thou wouldst think our herdsman was driving in them a troop of asses, between the pie-bald plains of Makran and the lavas of the Harrah.

But if thou lookest on us kindly, and abatest thy pride when thou comest amongst us, and regardest my valour in fight and my raids carried far abroad—

Then possess thyself in patience— it may be that yet shalt thou be happy, and milk thy herds into a great milk-skin — the skin of a sheep tanned with acacia-bark.