1. Do you know the house, desolate, with no companion
Save the singing girls and the fires for cooking?

2. A covering whose rents the weaver time
Has not mended, nor made for it enclosure.

3. The smooth stones where the windswept valley lies
White cushions and perfume on the saddlebags.

4. One night when Canopus rose through the darkness
Either fasting or drinking from the leather bottle.

5. O you I hope for and hold back from my protector
Till he should deign to glance at me from the edge of the fire,

6. Till when he drew near me in the thick of night
I mastered my uttermost effort at enmity and turning away,

7. And I launched at him, while the foe were shooting at him,
The piebald horses in a howdah with silver appointments

8. Till when the people thrust him away from the height of glory
And the blade of the seeker pierced the strings of his heart,

9. Till when death summoned me, and the pangs closed in,
He screamed to his beloved after the bolt shot home.

10. Then I saved him when no coward turned tail nor faint-heart
The day our company were as goodly steeds with the dust flying wild,

11. We live each alone in the land, to be joined together
By the limit to which the feud of the obstinate tyrant drives us,

12. As though its middle rope held back by the tent pole
The tails of stamping half-broken camels.

13. So he in the morning was turbulent as camels mad with rut,
Stirred up like locusts on new grown vegetation;

14. And in the youth, after the hair has grown white, is a goodness
That lavishes bounty on the neighbour after the head is hoary.

15. The smooth stones wrap the well-rope of the deep-dug well
Wavy sand not yet trampled nor oriented.

16. The cheek a cheek rosy through the polished winejar
That moves round between full hands with swinging ear-rings.