Ode XXI: He thought of ar-Rabab, and the

He thought of ar-Rabab, and the thought of her was his malady : so he followed after youthful passion ; and he who does so has no steadiness of judgement.

And when her phantom drew near, mine eye received a hurt, and from their fountains the tears flowed down

Like pearls let loose : they had been heedlessly strung on a string, and the string has failed them [and snapt].

And I see an abode of hers at the pools of as-Sidan : still are its traces clear and plain,

[Though they be] only ashes long extinct, from which the black side-stones have kept away the winds,

And the remnant of a trench the sides of which were raised high, so that the root of it still abides.

And that which has been spared of its spaces by the violent north-winds and rains is like the tattooing [on a woman's wrist].

Now the wild kine seek out therein places of pasture, and the tawny-backed oryxes and the white thereof mix together ;

And the little ones of the antelopes and the young of the gazelles are like lambs among the traces, [frisking at ease].

And the torrent-beds of Dhu-d-Dal, and 'Uqab, and az-Zukhm — none of them are without traces still of her sojourn there :

Yea, time was that ar-Rabab dwelt there : scouting parties in force her people had, that broke the might of their foes.

She is like a papyrus-stem : delicate living has caused her to outstrip her equals in age, and her limbs have shot up into tallness.

She shows thee a face like a sheet of smooth vellum, not wrinkled or lean, nor coarse in feature.

She is like the choicest of pearls, wherewith the Persians light up the arch of the throne of their King :

For a great price [the King] bought it : there brought it for sale a man slender of limb, straight like an arrow,

His breast anointed with oil : he fetched it forth from a billowy sea wherein the sword-fish dwells ;

Or like an ostrich's egg on a sand-hillock, laid gently down on the earth : no unevenness has it to the touch ;

It came before all its fellows, and there warmed it the male ostrich with a mass of wing-feathers matted together, like a bundle of old rags ;

He holds it close to his side with his wing, and the dust-coloured outer wing-feathers hedge the eggs snugly round.

And the tiring-women lose their tiring-pin in the thick masses of her curling hair, that are like bunches of [black] grapes.

Why dost thou not seek freedom from a yearning that hangs round thy neck like the cord, too short, that links together two camels yoked one to the other ?

Many the much-beaten road on which he who travels has a loose saddle, smooth like a mat woven by a skilful worker, its rising-grounds all of one level,

In the sides of which, like circles of embroidery on clothes, are hollows scooped by sand-grouse to rest in on their night-long way to water,

Have I passed along, keeping its sides in view, when the darkness was closing in, mounted on a she-camel good to answer when called upon in the evening for speed, equal in strength to a stallion.

She leaves behind her the stones in splinters when she storms along, while the hills quiver with heat on the margin of the mirage.

She hurries along when the road descends before her, like the incessant plying of the pulley enclosed between the [two] props [that support it at the well].

There does not fail her a pair of haunches strongly joined to the column of the spine, and withers thick and muscular,

And legs slightly bent, resembling the pillars of a building, with the flesh compact over the bones.

And when I raise the whip, [a heart] beneath her ribs, keen, easily stirred by emotion, sets her to rapid speed.

And she fills up the gap between her buttocks with a bushy tail : she is barren, and her barrenness makes its growth of hair luxuriant ;

And she has pads as hard as blacksmiths' hammers, not scanty in hair above the hoof, and not soft and smooth.

She seeks her mid-day rest in the shadow of the tent, like as the gazelle then seeks its lair under the roots of the wild lote-tree ;

Then is she like a rock left behind by a torrent, which has been stranded on the margin of its bed, while other heaped stones lie apart from it.

I have worn her out with toil until I have left her with bones crumbling to pieces, and the flesh thereon all spent.

She that rails at me says — but no knowledge has she of the morrow or of that which comes after it —

' Verily wealth it is that makes a man live long, while lacking brings near to him his death-day.'

Nay, by thy Fortune ! I shall not be given life for ever by a hundred camels, pure white, whose hair flies off [in the wind when they get fat].

Yea, though thou shouldst build for me [a second] al-Mushaqqar, on a mountain-top so high that even the mountain-goats cannot attain thereto,

Even there my Doom should track me out : there is no power that can withstand God's will !

Yea, I have found the straightest way in all things to be fear of God, and the worst of all to follow sin.