Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/171

 together. Sons of folly, sons without a name too, they are too afflicted to live. But now am I become their song of satire, ay, to them have I become a byword."

Thus in the city old ties of kinship and the generous feelings of the desert were to be spoiled by that huckstering spirit of the market to which the Bedouin has ever shown the contempt of Cyrus. Action from self-interest, the very gospel of townsmen, was of all things most distasteful to clan character, for the true clansman is always ready to sacrifice self for communal interests, even where he believes the conduct of his kinsmen to be ill advised. An excellent example of such self-sacrifice is to be found in a poem of the Hamâseh attributed to Dureyd, son of es-Simmeh. The poet has warned both Ârid and the men who went Ârid's way; he has said, "Think, even now two thousand are on your track;" yet his warning goes unheeded. "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 I not one of Ghaziyyeh? And if they err, I err with my house; and if Ghaziyyeh go right, so I. I read them my rede one day beneath where the sandhills fail; the morrow at noon they saw my counsel as I had seen." For a shout arises, a voice, "The horsemen have slain a warrior!" "Is it Abdallah?" cries the poet, and springs to the warrior's side. "The spears had riddled his body through, as a weaver on outstretched web plies deftly the sharp-toothed comb;" and his champion, whose counsel was yesterday set aside, now stands "as a camel with fear in her heart, and thinks is her youngling slain."

This readiness to share foreseen disaster with the