Ode XL: Rabi'ah extended the tie [of affection]

Rabi'ah extended the tie [of affection] to us, and we for our part remained united [in love] with her, so long as the bond held good.

Free-born is she: she shows [when she smiles] a row of white teeth regularly spaced, like the rays of the sun breaking forth from the midst of cloud ;

She has polished it with a green sappy twig of arak, sweet of savour, so that it is perfectly lustrous :

[A row of teeth] gleaming white in colour, delicious in savour, sweet in its moisture, what time the moisture of others changes for the worse.

She presents to her mirror a shining face, like the limb of the Sun as it rises in a cloudless sky,

Clear of hue, and an eye composed and calm, with its eyelids touched with kuhl, but without any sign of soreness therein,

And ringlets of hair, full in their ends, to which she has imparted the odour of musk, rich in perfume.

My longing was stirred by the phantom that visited me by night — the shape of one Beloved, modest, that checked any thought of wantonness ;

From a place remote it passed into the midst of our camel-saddles, having traversed the close-set thorny thickets darkling without any fear ;

A sweet companion — when it comes to visit me, it interposes between sleep and me, and none falls on my eyes.

Yea, thus is love — how bold it is ! it faces terrors and pays no heed to him that would hold it back.

So I pass the night without any sleep, and as each star rises, I see it rise ;

And when I say — ' At last the night has passed away ! ' the first part of it turns and comes back again :

The night draws on its halting stars behind it, and those that follow them are slow in coming after ;

Yet in spite of their lagging there drives them along one white in colour, when the hue [of the night] is melting away.

The love of Salma called me, after that the freshness of youth and its prime had passed away from me ;

She smote me with love-sickness, and has not yet healed me ; and my heart is distracted, torn this way and that.

She called me with her enchantments — verily she would bring down therewith the white-legged [wild goat] from the mountain top !

Fair and sweet are her words to those she talks with : but if they should seek aught else, she hears them not.

How many a desert have I traversed to reach Salma — deserts with horizons far away, where the sun-mist shone before mine eyes !

In a broiling hot wind in which meat might be cooked, wherein a sun-stroke like a sudden blow smites him that journeys.

And in order to reach her I have trodden enemies under foot, with a steadfast purpose and a constant care.

And many the desert with flanks white and fading away like the scattered, broken, wisps of cloud [after a storm] —

The mirage of the noontide swims about its way-marks and over its hard level stretches when the day mounts high —

Have we entered upon, in spite of its unknown dangers, mounted on hard-hoofed steeds, full of spirit,

[Slender] like light arrows, enduring patiently the journey by night, pressing onwards, not girthed with thongs [like those of camel-saddles] that cause galls like tattoo-marks.

Thou mayst see them rushing impetuously along, shod with shoes made by the smith that protect their feet from hurt by stones.

They wrap themselves in the night as they dart with us through it, like the darting of the dusky sand-grouse as they make for the drinking-place, arriving at dawn ;

They snatch a hasty draught to stay their thirst, and then make for a land to which resort all those in search of pasture [in time of dearth] :

Therein is a possession of the Children of Bakr : in them is a sight to see [for those near at hand], and a hearing to hear [for those at a distance].

They stretch out their hands generously when they are asked, and are helpful in their gifts, if aught can help ;

Folk are they in whose natures there is no habit of hasty foul speech, or of unseemly impatience ;

[They recognize what is incumbent on them, and are not weary in doing it : but when things are bitter, there is no softness in them.]

When the wind blows from the north, they deal forth food from full cauldrons, crammed with meat, wherein is no starvation,

And platters like great watering-troughs, filled full with the flesh of fat-humped camels.

He who seeks their protection fears no treachery from them at any time, nor dreads aught unworthy of their nobleness.

Generous are they in giving what other men cling to, and they restrain their souls from the stain of covetousness.

Fair are they of face, light-coloured of skin, lords to see, steady and composed when impatience is strong :

Grave and staid in temper when they are weighed against other men, stout of heart to face trouble when trouble flames forth.

Lions are they of whose fury men stand in awe : calm of spirit, when light-witted men fly hither and thither.

By means of them the enemy receives a crushing blow, and by means of them is a rent patched up when the tribe has been torn by discord.

These things have been from of old their well-known manner of life — no fashion newly invented.

When they have burthens loaded on them, they halt not beneath them — when thou loadest such loads even on the rich, he is lamed by their weight.

The good among their coevals are their friends, and the noblest of stock and root : many and various are the kinds of men !

A vision of Sulaima that will not stay with me [, but comes and goes,] keeps mine eye wakeful, and my heart is distraught.

My people dwell where I cannot seek her, by the side of al-Hadr, while she dwells at al-Fara'.

There is no meeting with her for me, though my heart be with her — save that drawing-near which comes when the eyes are closed in sleep.

She is like a [pearl] of at-Tu'am : if thou comest in contact with her, the eye is cooled, and the rest together is sweet.

One morning she fixed firm her mind to depart, and the caravan-leader led along her camel, and went away ;

And with her went a noble man a fettered slave, forfeit to her, in her train which he is doomed to follow.

And it seems, when the sun-mist runs over the plain in the forenoon, as though I were mounted on a wild bull whose tail sweeps the ground, with dark-brown patches on his cheeks :

His cheeks are [as it were] bordered with brocade, and on his back is a wide space of shining white :

[A bull] which an archer of Tayyi' has alarmed, and trained dogs accustomed to await [the twang of] the bow-string [to make an attack] ;

For he saw them, but not yet clearly — and dogs of the chase are ravening beasts !

Then he turned away, and on either side of him was a wall of dark-coloured dust — easily he went, not forcing the pace.

And thou mightest see the dogs, in spite of his easy, negligent going, tearing up the herbage with their paws, while the antelope dissembles,

And they draw nigh to him, but do not venture to beset him, being assured of bloodshed if he turns upon them.

He quickens his pace when they press him close, and when he leaves behind him their pack he seems almost to stand still —

A dweller in the wilderness, a brother of the Wild : when he catches a sound, straight he pricks up his ears.

The Merciful — praise be to Him ! — wrote [in the Book of Destiny] that in us should be breadth of character and strength to bear,

And stubborn resistance to all base things, what time he who is overborne by numbers has to accept wrong and bow before it,

And a building built of lofty deeds — God alone raises high, and whom He wills He brings low.

From God are the blessings that we possess : He has disposed them so— they are the work of God, and God is a skilful worker!

How is it possible for a free man who is a stranger to abide in a land in /which he has no liberty ?

He knows no stratagem by which he may ever escape from it, [though abiding in it be like] gulps of death : and death has gulps ! (?)

Many the man whose heart I have roasted in the fire of wrath, who longed for my death, but has not had his desire fulfilled !

He looks upon me as a morsel sticking in his throat, difficult to thrust out, that cannot be plucked away.

He foams and struts proudly, so long as he sees me not : but when he catches the sound of my voice, he shrinks into himself !

God has sufficed me hitherto against that which his soul harbours : when God takes aught in charge, it suffers no loss !

Evil is that which he gathers together that he may slander me therewith — food hard to digest, and a disease that wraps him round like a cloak.

He hurts me not, except that he envies me : and he screeches like the screeching of an owl.

He wishes me long life when he meets me face to face : when he is alone by himself, he feeds on my flesh.

Though he hide within him his hatred [when I am there], should he find me absent, his mischief would leap to light and gush forth.

Evil is their thought ! and often before now I have made manifest to them, at the furthest target of the contest, how I hit the mark.

The man who is filled with hatred does not become weary of it: he kindles the fire thereof when mischief becomes plain.

I hit men on the head with a stone that strikes the mark : it is not an ineffectual blow, and needs not to be repeated.

I need no whip to urge me on : I am given no trouble by the old worn-out camels, or by the thin and puny.

How can they expect to bring me to a fall, now that my head shines brightly with white hair and baldness ?

[My adversary] inherited hatred of me from his fathers, and he keeps carefully in mind that which he has learned from them ;

Therefore he works as they worked in his tribe : but he gains no victory, nor does he cease from impotence.

He sows [in his children] the disease, though he himself attained not thereby to the vengeance which escaped him, nor did he patch up a single rent [which he suffered at my hands].

Crouching on his haunches, he delivers his attack upon a smooth rock unapproached by men, at the summit of a lofty mountain peak the ascent to which is rugged.

A tower of refuge wherein he who dwells is safe, [this rock] has defeated all who before him strove to pluck it up :

It defeated 'Ad, and those who came after them, and ever stood stubborn, not to be humbled or brought low.

Men see it not save towering above them, and it undertakes, and leaves alone, what it will.

He aims [his stones] at it, but can never reach it — after the fashion of the fool who is pleased with his doings.

His eyes are blinded so that they are covered with a white film, and he blames himself when he desists from his vain endeavour :

For he sees that with all his pains he does it no harm, and that it remains smooth and fair, unhurt by the spite of men.

It splinters his horn when he butts at it, and when his slingstone hits it, the stone is shattered to pieces ;

And whensoever he seeks to attack it, he is overcome by his want of equipment of old, and his feebleness caused by a starvation diet.

And many the obstinate adversary I have encountered on your behalf, at a time when Fortune held aloof, when men assembled together in groups ;

And we have given each other to drink long-steeped bitterness, in a place [of encounter] to which the coward is not equal ;

And we have discharged at each other, while our enemies looked on, shafts envenomed with poison long infused —

Arrows, each one of them carefully sharpened, whose workmanship is beyond the powers of any but the most skilful ;

They came forth from hatred most clear and plain, in the prime strength of Time, when Time was young.

So we endeavoured to destroy one another, while men said — ' It is only the weakling who has need of the help of other people '.

At last he turned and fled, unable to guard his buttocks from my blows, with the bird of insolence fallen quite away from him,

With his nose bent down to the dust — he cannot raise it, and with his eyes humbly cast down, and his hearing deafened.

He ran away from before me with his demon routed, unable to help or protect him any more ;

He fled from me when nothing profited him more, with his back weighed down [by the load of my victory], humbled in deepest abasement.

Yea, in me he found a withstander stout of spirit, firm of foot in fight, making no complaint of pain,

And a tongue adroit and nimble, sharp like the edge of a sword — what-soever it touched it cut through.

And there came to me a companion with a constant supply of matter — agile and ready when the bags of provisions have given out ;

He said ' Here am I ! ' — and I had not called on him for help, disdaining him that pours forth shameful speech in the sight of men.

He is a surging sea with foaming waves, with proudly-swelling crests, that casts up rocks [upon the shore] ;

Full are its waters, all-mastering its flood — not the most skilful swimmer can escape therefrom.

Is Suwaid aught else but a lion lurking in his lair ? when a land is too damp for him, he moves elsewhere in search of prey.