From the Moallakah of Hareth

And, Asma, lovely sojourner! wilt thou forsake our land,
Forgetful of thy plighted vows on Shamma's glittering sand?
No more in Shoreb's rugged dell I see thee by my side,
No more in Katha's mead of green where vocal waters glide!
In Ayla and in Shobathan all lonely must I go,
And therefore sleep has fled my soul, and fast my sorrows flow.

Yet am I loved, and yet my eyes behold the beacon light
Which Hinda kindles on her hill, to lure me through the night;
Broad as the dawn from Akik's brow its ruddy embers shine,
But Hinda's heart may never meet an answering glow in mine!
And I must seek a nobler aid against consuming care,
Where all the brethren of my tribe the battle bow prepare.

My camel with the mother-bird in swiftness well may vie,
Tall as a tent, 'mid desert sands that rears her progeny,
That lists the murmur of the breeze, the hunter's lightest sound
With stealthy foot at twilight fall soft gliding o'er the ground;

But not the ostrich speed of fire my camel can excel,
Whose footstep leaves so light a mark we guess not where it fell;
Now up, now down, like withered leaves that flit before the wind,
On her I stem the burning noon that strikes the valiant blind.

Yes, we have heard an angry sound of danger from afar, —
Our brother's bands of Tayleb's seed have braved us to the war;
The good and evil they confound, their words are fierce and fell:
"Their league," say they, "is with the tribe that in the desert dwell."

Their men of might have met by night, and as the day began
A proud and a disdainful shout throughout their army ran,
And horses neighed, and camels screamed, and man cried out on man!