Ode LXV: Alas! nought can I avail

Alas! nought can I avail — Mu'awiyah, go thy way!- nor yet the fond women who follow the rede of the soothsayers.

No profit is there to a man who strives to deceive his soul, who wails over Fate and cries: 'Ah, would that my lot were thus!'

So tread forward : many the ways by which a man's death may come, and all thou canst give will not redeem thee a single life.

Yea, no man there is who knows a shield for his soul from Doom, unless it be God himself that stands as his Lord and Shield.

Ah, sorrow enough, that my kin will journey to-morrow on, and I shall be left for aye to lie in Ilahah's ground!