Ode XLII: Help, O my people! help for

Help, O my people! help for Youth that has passed away, for Wisdom that comes too late to mend errors gone before —

For the man who returns again to yearning for loves gone by, although there has sped since then a twelvemonth of peace of mind !

O dwelling of Salma that lay in Sarimah and al-Liwa, where empties the torrent-bed from al-Mutathallim's plain !

Daylong I stood there, sunk in thought, the guest of a dreary waste, to sate me with memories stirred by sight of it, lingering :

'Twas there she abode summer through, and then she bethought herself of places for winter meet, 'twixt 'Aiham and al-Jiwa' ;

She turned with the rein her lean camel, joining the hastening throng of women who urged their beasts among the well-straightened spears.

The camel goes, quickening pace, and proudly she speeds along as though by her girth there lurked an ugly big-headed cat.

She turned from the full fount, while the water she drank within her belly resounded, like the timbrel a singer strikes.

As oft as beneath her feet and throat fell a crest away, another arose in turn before to be overpassed:

She mounts up the vale of 'Irq, as though in her upland way she rose by a ladder's rungs to where hangs Arik on high.

For Taghlib I mourn, whose spears have stirred up an evil brood of mischiefs to plague her, breaking forth to bring low her strength.

Before their dissension, great the pile they designed to build — who coats not his building well with plaster, one day it falls :

A tribe like a rudder steering safely the ship, whose might went back to ancestral stock beyond praise, surpassing fame ;

When holding the breach of dread, its steeps bowed before their post, and lay smooth and open for the foremost of men to guard.

I liked not to hear men say — 'These beasts were the bloodwit gained for Qais, or for Marthad, or for Rumh at the watering-place.

A day, too, I mind when one, delaying to pay his due, was buffeted, torn his clothes, misused at the taxer's door.

In all of 'Iraq's marts some new tax is imposed to-day, and everything sold therein pays somewhat to sink the price.

Are we not the men whom kings treat warily, and mislike to touch those we shelter, lest blood have to be spilt for blood?

We deign to grant peace to kings so long as their ways are straight in handling us : not unknown the slaying by us of kings !

How many a prince acclaimed have we sent to look on death. when lightly he dealt with us, or ventured to do us wrong !

Yea, Bahra, it seems, think scorn of us and our spears — they say ' The lances of Christian men pierce never to draw the blood '.

Yet our spears it was that thrust, that black day of al-Kulab, Shurahbil from off his horse, in spite of the oath he swore

To pluck from our hands our lances : him Abu Hanash cast to ground from the back of a steed the tallest of all his stud ;

He reached him with following shaft — again did he couch the spear, and down fell the prince, prone-stretched with hands out and face in dust.

Who wrongs us, his dogs are wont to whine when they hear the tramp of hosts beyond 'count that march to ask for the justice due.

And 'Amr son of Hammam, him we dealt on his brow a blow unseemly — but him it cured at once of his tyrant's mood.

Yea, men see in us the shape of a serpent, the changeful skin, a lion's bright fur and the teeth of a render of limb from limb.