In this Assembly Abû Zayd is represented as showing his skill in artificial composition. He carries his son before the Governor or criminal judge of Bagdad, and accuses him of theft, in having stolen two-thirds of a copy of verses. The boy had, he said, taken two-thirds of each of several verses, and thus made a poem of his own. The Governor asks how this can be, and bids him repeat both poems, when it appears that Abû Zayd had constructed a poem with a double rhyme, one rhyme at the end of the verse, and one at the end of the fourth foot, so that by striking off the last two feet of each verse a new poem could be formed. The boy, however, declares that he had not taken his father’s verses, and that the coincidence was merely fortuitous. The Governor then, to test this, bids them repeat alternate verses on a subject which he should give them; if the boy could extemporize as well as his father, it would be evident that his defence was a just one. This serves to introduce a most elaborate set of verses, full of paronomasia on the subject of a cruel and disdainful beauty. The Governor then bids them be reconciled; and on the old man pleading poverty as a reason for refusing to support his son, the Governor relieves their necessities. He soon dis­covers that he has been duped, and binds Ḥârith, who, as usual, had witnessed the incident, to profound secrecy.

Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm, related:—My wonted home was irksome to me in the prime of my time, through a dreaded calamity, through a fear that came upon me:—And I poured out the cup of drowsiness, and put to their pace the camels of the night-march.—And I traversed in my journey rough places which no steps had smoothed, to which the Ḳaṭa would not find its way;— Until I came to the domain of the Khalifate, and the sanctuary which guards from fear.—Then I put off the sense of dread and its conception, and robed myself in the raiment of security and its vest;—And limited my care to the culling of delight, and the looking upon pleasure.—Now I went forth one day to the Precinct to exercise my good steed, and to circle my eye among its beauties.—And behold! horsemen who followed each other, and men on foot who swarmed:—And eke an old man long of tongue but short of cloak, who held by the collar a lad fresh in youth but worn of tunic.—So. I spurred on the track of the spectators until we arrived at the gate of the Prefecture.—And there was the Master of Protection sitting squarely on his cushion, awing by his deportment.—Then said the old man to him: “God magnify the Governor, and set his foot on high!—Know that I bred this youth from a weanling, and brought him up from an orphan; and then failed not in instructing him.—But when he now was shrewd and strong, he bared and brandished the sword of enmity.— Though I imagined not that he would be perverse to me, and insolent, since by me was he watered and made fruitful.”—Said the lad to him: “On what offence of mine hast thou hit, that thou publishest this foul thing of me?—For, by Allah, I have not covered the face of thy kindness; I have not rent the veil of thy secret; I have not broken the staff of thy estate; I have not disregarded the rehearsing of thanks to thee.”—Then said to him the old man, “Woe to thee, what guilt is fouler than thine, what vice more base than thy vice? —For thou hast claimed my magic and appropriated it; thou hast arrogated my poetry and stolen it.—Now among poets the stealing of poetry is more shameful than the stealing of the white and yellow; and their jealousy over the daughters of their wits is as their jealousy over virgin daughters.”

Said the Governor to the old man, “When he stole, did he flay, or transform, or copy?”—Said he, “Now by Him who made poetry the register of the Arabs and the interpreter of scholarship, he did nought less than dock the completeness of its exposition, and make foray on two thirds of its flock.” Said the Governor, “Re­cite the verses altogether, that it may appear what he took from the sum of them.”—Then he recited:

O thou who courtest the base world, know that it is a net of destruction, a pool of impurities;

A habitation which, when it makes thee laugh to-day, makes thee weep to-morrow: away with such a habitation!

When its clouds overshadow no thirst is refreshed by them; for they are a dry cloud that deceives.

Its forays cease not, nor is its prisoner ransomed even by the mightiest of stakes.

Towards how many a one made wanton by false confidence in it, until he has shown himself contumacious, one overstepping his power,

Has it turned the back of the shield, and made its blades to lap of his blood, and leaped to the taking of revenge!

So keep guard on thy life, lest it pass away lost in the world, left astray without any protection.

And cut the bonds of thy love for the world and thy seeking of it; so shalt thou find right guidance and comfort of the inner parts.

And when it makes a truce from its stratagem, be thou on thy watch against the warring of enemies, and the assault of the treacherous:

And know that its calamities come suddenly, even though the goal be far, and the journeys of the fates be tardy.

Then said the Governor: “And now what did this lad?”—Said the old man, “Of his meanness in recom­pensing he made an attack on my six-feet verses, and cut off two feet, and diminished from their measures two measures, so that the loss in them is a double loss.”— Said the Governor, “Shew what he took and whence he cut.”—He said, “Let thy hearing feed of me; give thy heart to understand me;—That thou mayest perceive well how he drew the sword upon me; that thou mayest estimate the greatness of his transgression towards me.” Then he recited, and his sighs ascended:

O thou who courtest the base world, know that it is a net of destruction;

A habitation which, when it makes thee laugh to-day, makes thee weep to-morrow;

When its clouds overshadow no thirst is refreshed by them.

Its forays cease not, nor is its prisoner ransomed.

Towards how many a one made wanton by false confidence in it, until he has shown himself contumacious,

Has it turned the back of the shield, and made its blades to lap of his blood!

So keep guard on thy life lest it pass away, lost in the world, left astray;

And cut the bonds of thy love for the world, and thy seeking of it, so shalt thou find right guidance.

And when it makes a truce from its stratagem, be thou on thy watch against the warring of enemies:

And know that its calamities come suddenly even though the goal be far.

Then turned the Governor to the boy and said, “Per­dition on thee for a rebellious disciple and a thieving pupil!”—But the lad said, “May I remain aloof from scholarship and its sons! may I be joined to whoever is adverse to it, and breaks down its edifices! if ever his verses came to my knowledge before I connected my own chaplet,—For it is only that our thoughts have chanced to draw at the same source as the hoof oft falls on the hoof-print.”

Said Al Ḥârith: Now it was as though the Governor allowed the truth of his assertion and repented of the hastiness of his blaming.—And he kept thinking on what means would disclose to him the truth, and how he might distinguish the genius from the fool;—And he saw no way but to set them to a contest, and to bind them together with the cord of rivalry.—So he said to them, “If ye wish for the exposure of him that lacks, and for the manifesting of the true from the false, do ye now alternate in versifying and con­tend, wheel in the race of verse-completing and run together:—That through clear proof he who perishes may perish, he who lives may live.”—They said to him with one tongue and an agreeing answer, “We are content with thy testing, so give us thy command.” —He said, “Of all the kinds of eloquence I am fondest of tejnîs, and I look upon it as the chief of them.— So string now ten verses, weaving them with its colour­ing, broidering them with its ornament;—And put in them the tale of my condition in respect to a mistress of mine, who is rare of form, dark red of lip, graceful in undulation, but full of pride and fault-finding, given to feign forgetfulness of agreement, and to prolong denial, and to break promise, while I am as her slave.” —Then started forth the old man as the winning steed, while the youth followed him like the second in the course.—And they raced together verse by verse in this order, until the series of verses was perfected and made up:

Old Man. There is a ruddy-lipped one who has compassed my enslaving by the delicacy of her utterance, and left me the com­panion of sleeplessness through her perfidy.

Youth. She has assayed to slay me by her aversion: truly I am in her bond, since she has gotten my heart altogether.