Ode XXIII: Asma's phantom visited me by night

Asma's phantom visited me by night, and again and again it comes: she left me, and this was her mind, that her vision should cause me to yearn.

She went, taking with her the longing of a sad soul whose heart is like a bird's broken wing, that now can do nought but flutter.

And a light thing it is to Asma that her road takes her far away while one distraught longs after her, and yearns with all his soul.

Let me alone ! for miserliness, O Mother of Haitham, steals away all that is good in the natures of men.

Let me alone, and do as I desire: for all my concern is for the brightness and lofty place of my good name.

Yea, honourable am I, and a household fills my heart with care for ills that befall, and losses, and calls for brotherly help.

And many the wanderer who causes my dogs to bark have I called to my tent after darkness had thickened, when the winter star-cluster was setting ;

He struggles with the freezing first blackness of the night, what time the winds make him draw close his raiment, and lightnings flash

Out of the depths of a rain-cloud heavy with water, with a fringe hanging near the ground, gushing forth in frequent showers ;

I have entertained him well, and have uttered no unkind word to him, nor have I said, that I might dismiss him from my hospitality, ' Sooth, there is no room in my tent '.

I said — 'Welcome to thine own people, to a place both easy and broad! See, here is the morning draught set ready for thee, and a friend.'

Then I went to the sleeping line of couching beasts, where the camels great and fat in the hump, like towers, the best of their kind, protected themselves from slaughter

By putting in my way a fine white camel, wont to bring forth her young in the early spring, great as a stallion when she reared herself in front of the other camels ten months gone in calf.

I made for her with a sword-blow on the shank, or with a wide wound, spouting blood, in the stabbing-place with its gash in front of the shoulders ;

Then two butchers set to work upon her, and mounting atop of her they flay away her hide while yet she is breathing in the last gasps of death ;

And there were drawn towards us her udder and her hump, and a white camel-calf that was just trying to stand, of purest breed,

Cut out of its mother's belly: a brother bound to me by the brotherhood of the good, a true comrade, clears away from it with his sword the membrane that enwraps it.

And throughout the night, in the dark hours, there was set before us and the guest a roast of her flesh, rich with fat, and abundance to drink ;

And he passed the night with quilts upon him, and smooth soft bedding, as a defence against the east wind — and cold it was !

Yea, every honourable man wards off blame by good cheer to his guest ; and among the good there is always to be found a way to well-doing.

By thy life ! it is not the lands that become too strait for their people : it is the natures of the men that inhabit them that are narrow.

Strains in me that come down from Zurarah uplift me to lofty height, and strains in my blood that come from Fadaki and al-Ashadd —

Glorious ancestry that lifts a man high upon a lofty stock: but some men's fathers there be that are puny and mean!