Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/167

 happiness is conspicuously absent. ʿAbd Yaghûth knows nothing of a heroes' paradise; his face is turned not to the shadow-world of the clan which he is about to enter, but to the comrades who drank with him in Nejrân "who shall never see him more;" even now he would gladly purchase life from the Blood-avengers with all his wealth; but, alas, it is no use, he must "hear no more the voice of the herdsmen who shout for their camels in the distant grazing-grounds."

ʿAbd Yaghûth has been taken captive, and ʿIsmeh son of Ubehr of Teym has carried him to his home, where the captive is about to be slain in revenge for the death of en-Noʿmân son of Jessâs, the leader of Temîm. Then said he, "O ye sons of Teym, let me die as befits one noble." "And how wouldst thou die?" asked ʿIsmeh. "Give me wine to drink and let me sing my death-song." "So be it," said ʿIsmeh, and plied him with wine and cut one of his veins. Then, as his life ebbed, and ʿIsmeh's two sons standing by began to upbraid him, this was the death-song of ʿAbd Yaghûth: "Upbraid me not, ye twain! Shame is it enough for me to be as I am: no gain in upbraiding to you or me. Know ye not that in reproach there is little that profits men? It was not my wont to blame my brother when I was free. O rider, if thou lightest on those men who drank with me in Nejrân aforetime, say, 'Ye shall never see him more!'—Abû Kerib and those twin el-Eyhem, the twain of them, and Qeys of el-Yemen who dwells in the uplands of Hadramaut. May God requite with shame my people for el-Kulâb—those of them of pure race, and the others born of slaves! Had it been my will there had borne me far away from their horse a swift mare, behind whom the black steeds flag in a slackening throng: but it was my will to shield the men of your fathers' house, and the