Sol 5.6

  1. O Abla, set aside the slanderer’s words;

    and heed the words of the loving informant.

  2. Take words I fashioned out of gold,

    and meanings I studded with jewels.

  3. How many a trackless, desolate waste I plunged into alone,

    and perilous deserts I crossed upon al-Abjar.

  4. How many a host, like mist, I routed

    with a keen Indian sword and a dark-brown spear.

  5. How many a horseman amid the battle ranks I seized

    while the horses stumbled over shattered lances.

  6. O Abla, everyone is before you—ask them all,

    if you harbor any doubt concerning Antarah.

  7. O Abla, has it ever reached you that I

    turned away defeated, in the flight of one retreating?

  8. How many a horseman I left, his flesh devoured

    by ravening wolves and bone-breaking vultures.

  9. I split open chests with every dreadful thrust,

    and ample coats of mail with every fearsome blow.

  10. When I ride, you see the mountains roar from

    the gallop of the horses—and every rugged tract as well.

  11. When I raid, the eagles of the wilderness circle

    around me, then feed upon the liver of every lionhearted warrior.

  12. How many an armored man I snatched from his saddle

    in battle, while he himself did not notice.

  13. How often I entered Death at its most terrible approach,

    and emerged from it in the greatest emergence.

  14. O Abla, if only you had witnessed my deeds among the foe:

    every severed limb, dust-besmeared.

  15. The horses, in the midst of the narrow pass, surged

    toward me like a bursting storm cloud—

  16. every black steed like the winds when it ran,

    or a high-backed dapple-gray, or a chestnut.

  17. I shouted among them an Absian battle cry,

    like thunder resounding in the army’s hearts.

  18. I wheeled toward them and charged upon them,

    and shattered their formation with al-Abjar’s chest.

  19. I cast them upon the ground as though they were

    palm trunks at the bottom of a rocky hollow.

  20. Their blood stained the armor over them;

    with it, the armor became like red carnelian.

  21. Often the noble steed stumbled over a horseman,

    while he imagined that his steed did not stumble.

Sol 5.6