Ode XXVIII: Alas ! yesterday the newly-knit bond

Alas ! yesterday the newly-knit bond with Hind proved to be worn out : she grudged her favour, though it would have cost her little to have granted it.

Would that she had as aforetime remained the object of my desire, according to the manner in which she was wont to strive to capture me, while I for my part hunted her !

But she is of the kind whose love is turned this way and that by the bright face of the nearest friendship that they can win for themselves.

Dost thou then mean it so ? Shall I tell thee how many a land, what time in the summer days the Sun stood still thereon,

And the singing cicadas shrilled in the sunshine, and the shining sun-mist, with its white sheets folded and its striped veils, showed its side to me,

I have traversed on a she-camel with well-knit fore-legs, taking long steps as she speeds on, whose swift course in her ceaseless post devours the miles before her ?

Then I spent the night, and my camel too spent the night [couched] like a she-ostrich — yea, she spent the night with her saddle-trees and my leather pad never taken off her back :

She closed her eyes, and I closed mine, and she slept in the last hours before dawn, stayed on her folded legs and breast, with her neck outstretched in the sand,

In tracks by al-Arakah, converging together, that face the Ocean's shore ; and there is the land where she has to dwell.

[She is sprightly,] as though there were [a cat] by her side at the fastening of her girth — she endeavours to get the better of it, and fiercely it assails her ;

She casts herself away from it, without exhausting herself, at top speed, as one of the dark-coloured sandgrouse puts on its utmost speed when it has nearly reached its watering-place.

And I rein her in, while her feet are still casting about the stones of a gravelly plain, varied in surface, whose dust I cannot escape from ;

And I am sure that, if God will, her limbs, and the marrow within her bones, will carry me safe to my journey's end.

Verily Abu Qabus is the object of her exertions on my behalf, as a requital for favours ingratitude for which would be a grievous sin.

I have seen that the fire-sticks of the good have elevated his dignity from of old, as the lucky stars excel all other stars ;

And if God knew that the mountains disobeyed him, He would bring cables and hale them before his feet.

And if there be a tribe of us in 'Uman that has taken counsel together to secede from his obedience, and its stubbornness has lasted long,

Already the pursuing [punishments] have overtaken it, and its embassies are on their way to the best of men beneath the heaven —

To a King who excels all other kings — none of them, in good judgement and generosity, comes near his achievements.

Whom among men has he not spoiled with an invading host, whose dust rises up like a pillar to the midmost heaven —

A dark-hued host, multitudinous, in their midst the Star of Death— the tramp of their feet presses on in the wide-extended land ?

A vanguard they have that gathers booty, as though it were eagles darting hither and thither, before which their prey flies in terror,

And noble horses, long-necked, with cheeks [lean and bare] like old water-skins, bring the points of the spears and lances within reach [of the foe]—

Horses whose fore-legs and skins stream with sweat, so that the black of them come home [ash-coloured] like the nozzle of the goldsmith's bellows ;

And splinters of iron fly about [in the clash of swords upon mail-coats and helmets] as though they were the chaff of the clay threshing-floors, when the reaped harvest is winnowed in the wind,

[From the hands of warriors] all mounted on crop-tailed steeds, all armed with blades the sides of which have been made smooth and even by the armourers.

Show kindness then — mayst thou be saved from cursing! verily thou hast in thy hands the whole of Lukaiz, its grey-beards and its boys ;

And set them free, so that their women may pass to and fro among them after their chains have been struck off, among the camel-saddles.