Ode LXVI: Carry my message to Hubaib, and

Carry my message to Hubaib, and drive into the minds of their chiefs, that my heart is estranged from them and full of sadness.

I used, aforetime, to outstrip easily those who raced against them of the Sons of Adam, so long as they did not cast away my halter.

They were foolish in their treatment of me, and I did not control their foolishness, until I withdrew myself down to the pasterns and the hair above the hinder parts of the hoofs.

If I had been of the race of 'Ad and of Iram, brought up among them, and of Luqman and [Dhu] Jadan,

They would not have redeemed in place of their brother from a threatening danger a man of as-Sakun, and they would not have departed in respect of him from the trodden tracks.

I asked my people [to help me] — and their camels had filled full the space between Ruhbah of the thickets and al-'Adan —

What time they offered their camels to the Son of Sawwar — a splendid gift, forsooth, to be thrown away on a folly !

How did they requite [the tribe of] 'Amir with evil for their doings, or how are they requiting me with evil in return for good ?

Or how profits what a camel that smells a young one, but refuses to yield her milk to it, gives, showing affection with the nose, when there is niggardliness with the milk ?