Ode XLIX: Knowst thou the abode whose traces

Knowst thou the abode whose traces have become effaced — all but the stones where the pot was propped and the places where the huts built of boughs were set up ?

Yea, I know it : 'tis Asma's abode ; and the tears pour in streams down my cheeks.

It has become a solitude since its folk went away — empty of all, there is not left in it a single soul —

Nought but the large-eyed wild-kine that pasture therein, like to Persians stalking abroad in their high-peaked caps,

After the multitude that once I saw there : tents of leather had they, and they wore delicate raiment.

Canst thou be made to forget her love by an eight-year-old she-camel? Nay, forgetfulness comes not so easily !

A camel high in the neck, like a stallion, as big as a male ; full of brisk-ness, she complains not of weariness.

(She did not bear a young one in the summer, nor did I bind her teats with the sirar, while she brought home the lambs of the flock ;

Nay, but she went far afield to pasture among the other she-camels that have no milk, until she became fat and filled out her flesh, so that her hump was mottled like a cairn of stones.

She gallops along when the whip is shaken, as runs a wild-bull four years old, alone in the wilderness, compact like an arrow ;

Dazzling white is he, like a robe of al-Yaman, and on his legs are bands of black the colour of charcoal.

He spent the night in a hollow rich in grass, the hurbuthah of which is mixed with yanamah.