Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/288

254 and did justice among my subjects; yea, I gave gifts and largesse and freed slaves, male and female. Thus lived I many years in all ease and delight of life, till death knocked at my gates and calamities took up their abode with me and with my folk; and it was on this wise. There betided us seven successive years of drought, wherein no drop of rain fell on us from heaven and no green thing sprouted for us on the face of the earth. So we ate what was with us of victual and [when we had made an end thereof] we fell upon the cattle and ate them, till there was nothing left. Then I let bring my treasures and meted them with a measure and sent out trusty men to buy food. They visited all the lands in quest thereof and left not a single city unsought, but found no victual and returned to us with the treasure, after a long absence, disappointed, and gave us to know that they could not avail to barter fine pearls for wheat, bushel for bushel neither weight for weight. So, when we despaired of succour, we displayed all our riches and things of price and shutting the gates of the city, resigned ourselves to the judgment of our Lord and committed our affair to our Master. Then we all died, as thou seest us, and left what we had builded and what we had treasured up. This, then, is our story, and after the substance abideth the trace.’

Then they looked at the foot of the tablet and read these verses:

O son of Adam, let not hope make mock of thee, I pray. From all thy hands have treasured up thou shalt be snatched away. I see thou covetest the world and all its fleeting show, And young and old have done the like before thee many a day. Wealth, by fair means and foul, they got; but all their hoarded store, When once their term accomplished was, could buy them no delay. Armies they led and gathered gold galore, then left their wealth And what they’d built and to the tombs departed straight and lay Down in a narrow lodging in the dust, and there asleep, In pledge for that they wrought of yore, they do abide alway;