Ode LXXIV: To whom belong the traces of

To whom belong the traces of dwellings like sheets of vellum covered with writing — long deserted, where al-Kathib and Wahif lie empty of their folk,

And [the flowers and greenery] which successive showers have brought forth therein glow like streaks of bright colour, painted with pigments, playing on a surface

Over which a scribe has bent himself, working with his ink-pot in his hand, sometimes moving his fingers straight forward and sometimes moving them back?

And many the [mare], wide of mouth and nostrils, whose forelegs have never been fired, nor has she ever been put to mean work, or spent the summer with a slave, being galloped about on his errands —

She gives thee without touch of the whip the utmost of her speed, and flies like a gazelle which the hunter's arrows have missed —

Have I had in hand, when the sore-beset cried for help — while another was borne about in the tribe by an ash-grey worn-out old camel ambling along, [and could give no useful aid] —

Clad in a bright [mail-coat], like the surface stirred by the wind of a pool swelled by heavy showers of the summer that pare down the hills,

With a [spear] smooth and regular in its length, which satisfies thee when thou testest it, and pierces straight through that which it is aimed at, and is not bent back,

And a yellow [bow] of nab'-wood — these are the arms I have ready — with a gleaming [blade] that cuts through all it smites, and cleaves a man down to his trunk —

[The preparation for war of a man who is not soft in his strands, nor one that turns away from that which God has ordained ;

Therewith do I face the battle renewed again and again, when War bares her hindmost teeth, and red are her hands and feet,

As a man fights who knows right well that he shall not escape Death, nor will Death turn aside from him.]

Yea, though I were in the Castle of Ghumdan, with its gate guarded by Abyssinian infantry and a black serpent, tame to my will,

Even then, wheresoever I might be, my destined death would reach me, a guide tracking out my footsteps and ambling along with my doom.

Shall I face dangers with a faint heart from excess of wariness ? In what land are there not pitfalls unnumbered of death ?