[Footnote 1:  The five names foregoing are those of mountains.]

          A FAIR LADY

From the ’Mu ‘allakat of Antara’:  Translation of E.H.  Palmer

     ’Twas then her beauties first enslaved my heart—­
     Those glittering pearls and ruby lips, whose kiss
     Was sweeter far than honey to the taste. 
     As when the merchant opes a precious box
     Of perfume, such an odor from her breath
     Comes toward me, harbinger of her approach;
     Or like an untouched meadow, where the rain
     Hath fallen freshly on the fragrant herbs
     That carpet all its pure untrodden soil: 
     A meadow where the fragrant rain-drops fall
     Like coins of silver in the quiet pools,
     And irrigate it with perpetual streams;
     A meadow where the sportive insects hum,
     Like listless topers singing o’er their cups,
     And ply their forelegs, like a man who tries
     With maimed hand to use the flint and steel.

          THE DEATH OF ’ABDALLAH

          AND WHAT MANNER OF MAN HE WAS

From the original poem of Duraid, son of as-Simmah, of Jusharn:  Translation of C.J.  Lyall.

     I warned them both, ’Arid, and the men who went ’Arid’s way—­
       the house of the Black Mother:  yea, ye are all my witnesses,
     I said to them:  “Think—­even now, two thousand are on your track,
       all laden with sword and spear, their captains in Persian mail!”
     But when they would hearken not, I followed their road, though I
       knew well they were fools, and that I walked not in Wisdom’s way. 
     For am not I but one of the Ghaziyah? and if they err
       I err with my house; and if the Ghaziyah go right, so I.
     I read them my rede, one day, at Mun’araj al-Liwa: 
       the morrow, at noon, they saw my counsel as I had seen. 
     A shout rose, and voices cried, “The horsemen have slain a knight!”
       I said, “Is it ’Abdallah, the man whom you say is slain?”
     I sprang to his side:  the spears had riddled his body through
       as a weaver on outstretched web deftly plies the sharp-toothed comb. 
     I stood as a camel stands with fear in her heart, and seeks
       the stuffed skin with eager mouth, and thinks—­is her youngling
            slain? 
     I plied spear above him till the riders had left their prey,
       and over myself black blood flowed in a dusky tide. 
     I fought as a man who gives his life for his brother’s life,
       who knows that his time is short, that Death’s doom above him hangs. 
     But know ye, if ’Abdallah be dead, and his place a void,
       no weakling unsure of hand, and no holder-back was he! 
     Alert, keen, his loins well girt, his leg to the middle bare,
       unblemished and clean of limb, a climber to all things high;
     No wailer before ill-luck;