Chinese and Arabian Literature - E. Wilson - The Search For Mecca

SELECTIONS FROM ARABIAN POETRY 79
The wounds on our cheeks are but transient, I own,
With a blush they appear and decay
But those on the heart, fickle youths, ye have shown
To be even more transient than they.
—
VERSES TO MY DAUGHTERS"
With jocund heart and cheerful brow
I used to hail the festal morn
How must Mohammed greet it now ?
A prisoner helpless and forlorn.
;
—
While these dear maids in beauty's bloom,
With want opprest, with rags o'erspread,
By sordid labors at the loom
Must earn a poor, precarious bread.
Those feet that never touch'd the ground,
Till musk or camphor strew'd the way.
Now bare and swoll'n with many a wound.
Must struggle thro' the miry clay.
Those radiant cheeks are veil'd in woe,
A shower descends from every eye,
And not a starting tear can flow,
That wakes not an attending sigh.
Fortune, that whilom own'd my sway,
And bow'd obsequious to my nod.
Now sees me destin'd to obey.
And bend beneath oppression's rod.
Waladata.
Ye mortals with success elate,
Who bask in hope's delusive beam,
Attentive view Mohammed's fate,
And own that bliss is but a dream.
Mohammed Bed Abad.
** Seville was one of those small sov- For thirty-three years he reigned over
ereignties into which Spain had been Seville and the neighboring districts
divided after the extinction of the house with considerable reputation, but being
of Ommiah. It did not long retain its attacked by Joseph, son to the Emperor
independence, and the only prince who of Morocco, at the head of a numerous
ever presided over it as a separate king- army of Africans, was defeated, taken
dom seems to have been Mohammed prisoner, and thrown into a dungeon,
Ben Abad, the author of these verses. where he died in the year 488.