Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 5.djvu/289

255 As ’twere a caravan, whose folk had halted for the night And set their burdens in a house, wherein there was no stay. And quoth its lord to them, ‘O folk, there is no sojourn here For you;’ and so they girt their beasts and fared upon their way, Misliking, after lighting down to rest them, to depart Forthright again, filled full of care and trouble and dismay. So look thou furnish thee with store of good shall gladden thee To-morrow, and the fear of God thy practice govern aye.

And under this was written: ‘By Allah, the fear of God is the best of all things, the keystone of certainty and the [only] sure stay. Verily, death is the manifest truth and the sure promise, and therein, O man, is the goal and place of returning. Take warning, therefore, by those who have foregone thee to the dust and hastened in the way of the predestined end. Seest thou not that hoariness calls thee to the grave and that the whiteness of thy locks maketh moan for thee of thy life? Wherefore be thou on the watch, ready for thy departure and account. O son of Adam, what hath seduced thee from the service of thy Lord? Where be the peoples of old time? [They are become] a warning to whoso will take warning. Where be the kings of China and the lords of power and prowess? Where is Sheddad ben Aad and where the cities he built and stablished? Where is the proud tyrant Nimrod and Pharaoh who rebelled against God and denied Him? Death followed hard upon them and laid them low, sparing neither great nor small, male nor female; yea, and the Reaper of Mankind cut them off, by Him who maketh the night to return upon the day!

Know, O thou who comest to this place, that she whom thou seest here was not deluded by the world and its frail delights, for it is deceitful, perfidious, a house of perdition and vanity, and salutary to the creature is the remembrance of his sins; wherefore she feared her Lord and made fair her dealings and provided herself against the appointed day. Whoso cometh to our city and God vouchsafeth him