Ode CXXII: To whom belong the dwellings that

To whom belong the dwellings that lie outworn in the bend of the valley, by the Dow-palm between Buhar and ash-Shir' ?

Effaced are they : yea, they have seen seven long years pass since my Love dwelt there, and the traces have vanished one by one,

All but the remnants of a booth, scarcely to be distinguished — its posts stood in a circle upon the site.

And I halted in the place where the whole tribe had once lodged, and the tear-ducts in my head streamed plentifully with tears

Like the banks of a flowing channel by a river-side, the runnels of which gush with water over the seed-plots.

I stayed there, that I might question the traces, my horse broad of chest, [with a body trained down so as to be firm and hard] like a staff of nab' wood used for beating wool.

I wear out my riding-camels by urging them, in spite of their unwilling-ness, ceaselessly on at a quick pace between a walk and a gallop,

With the swift amble of a she-ostrich, earless, thinly-feathered, in the midst of other ostriches thinly plumaged like herself,

And with the endurance of a keen blade which a skilful smith has chosen out for long whetting and polishing ;

Or with the hands of a deaf man [that hears nothing to distract him from his work,] striving against time to fill troughs for thirsty camels : his pulley moves to and fro as he pulls [on the well-rope that lifts the bucket]

From the copious waters of a well, at which his turn of watering comes on the morning after the night of the third day :

He steadies the shaking of the rope, and if his hands miss it, he comes to their assistance with his upper arm.

Carry this message to the Sons of Sahm at thy home — ' Does Fortune deal with you in a way different from that in which she treats other men ?

' Or do ye see to-day one who has himself been the object of his brother's clemency in his turn showing mercy to another ?

' Yea, if ye win the victory in the strife with your cousin, and he becomes like a piece of fat in a herdsman's wallet,

' And ye set an example to men by your conduct in dealing with him, and sit in a place where the wind may change —

'Ye shall surely be reviled in men's talk together in places where they meet, that ye do not mix grace with repression.'