Ode XCII: May a forgiving Lord and an

May a forgiving Lord and an Intercessor who is listened to pour blessings upon Yahya and his followers !

A folk were they to whom God decreed that the call [to die] should go forth : and setting aside God's command is a thing that may not be.

The Mother of 'Ubaid-allah is plunged in sorrow : now that thou art gone her sleep is nought but a troubled doze :

As a young she-camel yearns, distraught, she yearns with a pitiful moaning, and a mighty longing calls her.

O Knight ! what a knight wast thou, with thy tent trodden by crowding guests, thy generous arm ever stretched to help !

The sayer of kind and friendly things, and the doer of them : the slaughterer of she-camels, mothers of calves born in the Spring, one after another !

He joined together calmness and gentleness : then — when the moment came — he sprang to the attack like the uncoiling of a serpent :

He burst forth, and his onset did not belie his promise — as the wolf springs on the prey in the valley of wild beasts.

[When Mus'ab's friends all deserted him, he paid his duty to him in fullest measure.]

He filled the walnut-wood bowl for his guests, as though it were the raised border of a cistern in a clay bottom that holds the water fast.

Never did his guests go forth from his tent without being fully sated with meat and drink.

And many the horseman, keen to follow, mounted on a stalwart steed, coming with a rush in his gallop with the lance, his shock hard to withstand,

Didst thou withstand, and beat him back, when nought could check his course but sword-blows, mighty in force, painful to feel.

Whomsoever it may not grieve, me at least it grieves to see thy little sons left to those that are no shepherds —

[To Abu Talhah or to Waqid — yea, we know that that is their sure destruction.]