Ode CXX: Is that which thou knowest [i

Is that which thou knowest [i. e., her inclination to thee], and that which she gave to thee in trust [i. e., her love], still kept as a hidden treasure [with her], or is the bond of affection which bound her to thee severed, now that to-day she is far from thee ?

Or is an old man who weeps, without coming to the end of his tears, after loved ones on a day of parting, requited for his pains ?

I knew not aught of the parting until they had resolved to be gone : all their male camels were bridled for starting a little before the dawn ;

The handmaids had brought in [from the pasture] the male camels [for the ladies to ride], and the men lifted up thereon the litters — each of them with gay cloths of Tazid bound over it,

Worked with red broidery in lines and circles : all day long the birds snatch at them, as though they were stains of blood.

They carry among them [a woman dainty as] a citron with a sprinkling of saffron thereon : it seems as though her sweet fragrance were always being smelt by the nostrils :

Yea, as though a musk-pod were hidden where her hair divides, when one stretches forth his hand to take her, even though his sense of smell were cut off by a stoppage due to cold.

And the eye of me is like a great water-bag with which descends swiftly the well-slope a strong dark-coloured she-camel, girt round the withers with the gear for raising water :

She had been left alone, without saddle or load, in the pasture for a season, until there grew to her a hump [big and black] like the side of a smith's bellows, well knit together ;

The mange has passed away from her, and she is covered all over with the marks of the pure, unmixed pitch with which she had been anointed.

She irrigates water-channels the greenery of which has fallen apart [by reason of its richness], the lower portion thereof being filled full by the rushing water.

[Even so are my tears] at the memory of Salma ; but my dwelling on the thought of her now is nought but folly : the making of conjectures about that which is hidden is a vain unprofitable thing.

She is slender where her two girdles go round, filling her shift elsewhere, slim and lithe, like a gazelle-fawn bred up among the tents.

Shall there bring me up to the last rear-guard of her tribe, now that they are gone far away, a strong she-camel like a rock standing in the shallows of a torrent-bed, mighty and hard ?

The froth of her mouth, tinged with green [from the rich pasture on which she has lately been feeding], is like a wash of mallows upon her lips, her cheeks, and her jaws.

On such a one may the waterless desert be crossed from side to side, what time in their dark solitudes the owls send forth their dull cry.

She watches askance for the whip, while she keeps her mouth firmly compressed, as listens for a sound [a wild bull,] lean and lank in the flanks, with black streaks and patches on his legs.

She is like [a male ostrich], with legs coloured red and scanty down on his fore wing-feathers, to whom along the margins of the sand-dunes the colocynth and the tannum have ripened ;

He spends the day among the colocynths streaked with green and yellow, breaking them open to extract the seeds, and he nips off that which shoots up above ground of the tannum.

His mouth is like a split in a stick — hardly canst thou discern the cleft : he is small in that wherewith he hears sounds (i. e., the ear), as though it were cut off at the root.

[So he feeds,] until he calls to mind certain eggs, and a day of drizzling rain, with a heavily-clouded sky, impels him to motion ;

And his swift going in his race is not intermitted, nor is he tired of his amble, just short of a gallop.

Almost [, as he stretches out his neck and casts forward his foot in his stride,] does his nail pierce his eye-ball, as though he were one afraid of a misfortune, in terror thereat.

A fleet runner is he: his breast is like the wooden frame of a lyre: he looks like a water-bird [flying down with outstretched neck] to pools in moist meadows.

[He is making for a brood of nestlings with little hair on their crops : when they crouch together in the nest, they look like the roots of trees with dust gathered about them by the wind.]

Till at last he attains, while the Sun's limb is still high, to the nest of two spouses, wherein are the eggs ranged close together :

Twice he goes round the nest-cup, carefully looking for traces about it, as though he feared some evil thing, in terror thereat.

He speaks to his mate with a clucking and chirruping noise, like as the Greeks chatter their jargon together in their castles.

Small is his head, set on a slender neck, and his wings and breast are like a tent fallen down, about which a clumsy handmaid busies herself.

There comes round about him his mate, long-necked, bending down her head, who answers him with a murmuring note wherein is a trill.

Yea, every people, although they be mighty and many in number, their chief one day shall be pelted with the heavy stones of calamity ;

And praise is not to be bought except by paying the price — well known is it, of the things that men are loth to part with ;

And generosity is an obstacle to riches, a destroyer thereof, and miserliness keeps those who practise it in possession of their goods, but is everywhere counted a shame by men.

And wealth is like the fleece of the little sheep — men make sport there-with : at one time it is abundant upon the sheep, at another shorn away ;

And he who is destined to be fed with booty wins it on the day of plundering whithersoever he goes : and he who is withheld from it [by Fate] gets nothing.

And Folly is a thing at each man's hand — one has no need to seek for it afar : and oft-times good sense is not to be found among men.

And he who comes upon ravens and scares them away [by stones and cries], in spite of his being at the time safe and sound, the ill omen has lit upon him and there is no escape.

And every fortress, though it remain long time safe upon its upholding pillars, shall one day be brought to ground.

Yea, time was when I companied with revellers, among them a resonant lyre, and all the crew were overthrown by the potent tawny wine

A cup of glorious grape-juice, kept till old for one of their festivals by men of the tavern, who pass it from hand to hand :

It cures the megrim, and there is no fever in it to harm thee : nor is it accompanied by swimming in the head ;

From 'Anah it comes, most potent : it has not been seen by men's eyes for a year, hidden away in an amphora smoothly plastered with clay and sealed.

Daylong it sparkles in the glass bowl, in which it is mixed by the house-slave of a Persian noble, with his mouth bound with a linen band ;

Their wine-jug is like a gazelle standing up on a height, bound round the spout with strips of linen, wherewith to strain through the wine :

Shining white is it — its guardian has brought it forth to the sunlight, with sprays of sweet basil twined round it, perfumed with aromatics.

And oft-times have I gone forth in the morning to meet my adversary, my companion a stout heart, keen, trusty, well-known for its prowess.

And oft-times have I played Maisir when hunger burdened the gaming-arrow of nab'-wood bound round with a sinew, marked with a notch by the teeth ;

If they played the game with horses (instead of camels) as the stake, I would play it for the same stake : and whatsoever people stake is bound io be paid.

And time was when I companied with young warriors [bent on a raid], whose food was the contents of water-skins green and discoloured, and meat that had begun to stink.

And time was that I rode the camel-saddle, while there scorched me a day with the sun in Gemini, deadly with the poison-wind,

Blazing with heat, as though the blast of a furnace wrapped the rider round, reaching his body through his clothing, though his head was bound closely with a turban.

And oft-times do I lead before the whole tribe a tall mare, whose lineage, well known, makes her the first of all our strains ;

There is no fault to be found with her splint-bones, nor with her pasterns, and her hard hoofs have not been worn down by paring :

[Her leg is like] a prickle of a palm-tree, or like the staff of a man of Nahd, and into its hoof is introduced an elastic frog as it were a hard knawed date-stone of Qurran.

She follows after a troop of black she-camels [on whose milk she is fed] : when they are driven together [to be milked], they make a confused yearning noise as though a timbrel with its parchment broken were being sounded on a hill ;

When the camel-calf born in spring bleats by the side of the she-camels, the large well-shaped mother-camels, big in the hump, on their side utter their yearning cry.

There goes in front of them one of the male camels, a brown-cheeked stallion experienced in covering, having much flesh, huge and bulky.