Ode LXVIII: I lay awake, while those free

I lay awake, while those free from care slept ; and there stirred up with the coming-on of night a painful grief in my heart ;

And the thought of Malik wakened again my sorrow, and I slept not but with a disturbed heart.

Time after time, when I restrained my tears, they refused to be held back, but gushed forth, tears upon tears,

Like the overflowing of a great water-bag between the side-pieces that confine the pulley, the water of which irrigates the small channels, and the crops [drink it in] —

A water-bag with patches [over the loops] lately sewn on, with its leather full of holes, kept off from the side of the well-shaft by a protuberance in the barrel of the shallow well —

At the remembrance of a loved one which holds me when a good portion of the night is gone, and already is near the coming-forth of the late-rising stars.

When mine eyes are dried of their tears, memory of him is revived in me by the doves that call to one another, alighting on the branches over my head :

They call on their youngling lost, and I am plunged into grief for Malik, and in my breast is a heart cloven with anguish at the thought of him :

It seems as though I had never sat by his side, never seen him by me of a night, never found him there when the morning dawned !

A man he who never lived a day under reproach, and never ceased to have about him encampments of those who sought his bounty ;

A following he always had, for men knew that to those who drew nigh to him he was like the showers of summer and spring

When the milch-camels of the tribe come home at night famine-stricken, driven in by a north-wind that wrinkles the faces and blackens the skin.

When one who had on him the burden of guilt made for the tent of Malik, there stood surety for him a protector high-nosed, a stout defender.

By my life ! goodly was the man when a guest arrived in the late darkness, when there had sped of the longest winter's night something less than a half,

Ready to give freely all that he had in his possession, no niggard, what time hunger bared to day the white-skinned women that thrill men's hearts with their beauty,

What time the Sun in the heaven, in the droughty air, looked like a yellow [disc] with streaks of saffron drawn across it.