1. Her tribe pitched their tents as dusk was falling,
And she who had refused now was complying.

2. Yet nothing came of the trysts she made with us
Save madness, sorrow, and sickness defiling.

3. A speaker whose word was no true consolation
Nor kept the faith that at first he was voicing,

4. And nothing was she, that niggard, but like her kind,
Betrayers who break even the most solemn pledging.

5. No debtor who does not mean to repay
Borrows money save from the poor or by extortion.

6. But nights of affliction will whisper to him
The heart's secret and give back all that was borrowed.

7. For over us youth's beauty was vanishing
While we in a time men come to full evil were living.

8. She rose to show herself, and her loveliness
Was a rain-cloud watering a land that was arid.

9. A soft smooth cheek, and we poured out perfumes on it
Whenever her tumbling black curls would allow it.

10. It seemed not marvelous that snow should gleam then,
A teasing flash of teeth when her red lips smiled.

11. As if she were a yellowed ivory-tusk set
In the black braids that on her temples were lying,

12. Or a pearl that a diver in non-colored seas
Had brought up when the whirlpools were seething around him.

13. On the back of a red-coated steed she came forward,
Its polished hooves beating their rhythmical drumming.

14. She rode a hollow-flanked camel, tall as a castle,
Urged on by her camel-man striking and goading.

15. Till when the ships were embarked on a boil ing ocean,
She tossed away her goatskins and sat there disgusted.

16. In a cleft rigorous Death was waiting to grab him
Who from those horrid perils had not disentangled.

17. A diver in water who would draw oil from under it
While above him the eddies to fury were rising,

18. Until Death seized him there in the dark-colored waters,
And the canvas enfolded a corpse, when he vanished.

19. It seemed as though the living had never inhabited
The land, nor did they water their cattle with Salsabil,

20. And they never encamped by Ghawr, nor did their tents
Stand on the plains about Unaigah or Rudah.

21. Yet life was serene and the land was secure,
And for men there had come no adversity like this one.

22. We hoped we should live, though before us no nation
Had failed to perish thus as perished the peoples.

23. Did you not hear that the winds were ordained in the old time
To destroy the living things and level their houses?

24. Men too like Noah's people, who said unto them,
O people, serve not idols and reverence no images!

25. But they disbelieved the preacher who told them the truth;
They stopped their ears and their hearts grew stubborn against him.

26. Unawed by the fate overhanging, the Prophet beside them,
Saw truly, and volunteered them nor warning nor hiding.

27. Let that be; now hear of a people whose dwellings
Were made desolate by a rain-burst of ruin.

28. The abandoned enclosures were filled by the wild things,
and the valley-clefts with the wolves' generations,

29. She-wolves that never had seen through time an upcropping
Of early campsites or shriveled and fire-blackened tent-pegs,

30. Until that day when the rents in their people waxed wide, -
Had one then been wise, morn should not have surprised him, -

31. They took the broad valley wherein Honor was welcomed
By tribe of Samy or Hakam or Umayyah's children.

32. How many enclosures Time's envious roughness
Overthrew which their measured ropes once had surrounded!

33. Led out their mares did Ibnu-Layla, the horses
All saddled while dawn's tinge crept pallid above them,

34. Charging through night-shadow hostiles that vomited
Darkness on darkness encountered and swallowed.

35. Better descendants of Suleym and Abu-'Amr
Should by false stroke inhabit resentments and sorrow

36. Than when the physician by his deftness has healed it,
Adds to the stitches additional ugly scarring.

37. A voice cried aloud that she perished. I answered,
Since lions themselves cannot firmly establish

38. When War has grown hoary. Such warriors forgot I
By smiting too often the hostile resisters.

39. No, not forever endures what the clan splits asunder
Or back from the dead can you bring the Arimite nation

40. The Seas have rolled onward and Malek's house passes,
And tribesmen take oaths that they never will help them.

41. Can warriors rescue themselves from a land-quake
When the powers beneath them engage one another?

42. Nor Weyreh can glory suffice his ambition
Nor will he keep striking when demons possess him.