“In the world I am a pattern, point of sight [Ḳiblah] for folk of wisdom,

Save that all my days I pass in tardy rest and early outset,

And the stranger, though in Eden he alight, is like one homeless.”

Then he said: “O Allah, as Thou hast made us of the number of those who are guided so that they may guide others, make us also of the number of those who follow the right way and spend.” Thereupon the people brought him a drove of camels together with a singing girl, and begged him to visit them while after while. Then he rose to go, making them longing for his return, and carrying off the slave-girl and the drove. Said Al Ḥârith, son of Hammâm: Thereupon I accosted him, and said: “I know thee a rogue, since when then hast thou become a legist?” He kept twisting about a little while and then he indited, saying:

“I alter my coat to the whims of each moment and mix with its changes of welfare and ill-fare,

And pledge my companion in converse with all that may flatter his humour to please my companion,

With tellers of tales circulating narrations, with drinkers of wine circulating the goblets.

Now making the tears by my sermon to pour down, now cheering the hearts by my jocular sallies,

And feasting the ears, if but op’ning my mouth, by spell of my speech that will meeken the restive,

And if I am minded my hand makes the pen drop a shower of pearls to adorn many volumes.

How many a subtlety dim as Sohá that came to be bright as a sun by my clearing,

How many my sayings that captivate hearts, and leave in the hearer a yearning behind them,

And virgin Ḳaṣîdehs indited by me, that met with applause loud expressed and enduring.

Yet plotting of fortune has singled me out, a plotting surpassing that Tir‘aun’s ’gainst Moses,

And kindles against me a war day by day, I tread through its blaze on a furnace, a furnace!

And strikes me with ills, such as melt a man’s vigour, and blanch people’s heads with the whiteness of hoar-frost.

And brings to me near but the alien, the hateful, while banishing from me the nearest, the dearest!

And were it not but for the vileness of fortune my lot in the world were not vile, by its fell feud.”

Then I said to him: “Soothe thy sorrows and blame not fortune, but be thankful to Him who has turned thee from the way of Iblîs to the way of Idrîs” (Ash-Shâfi‘î). He replied: “Leave off idle talk, and tear no veils, but rise with us to make for the Masjid of Yathrib (Medina), haply we may cleanse away by the visitation the filth of our sins.” So I said: “Far be it that I fare with thee, before I learn thy explanation.” He replied: “By Allah, thou hast imposed duties upon me, and when thou hast asked, thou hast asked but a small matter; listen then to what remedies the mind, and removes ambiguity.” Then after he had made clear to me the enigmatical and lifted from me my perplexity, we tightened our saddles, and I fared on, and he fared on, while he ceased not from his nightly talk as long as the journey lasted, on such topics that made me forget hardship and I would have liked with him “the distance to be long” (allusion to Koran, ix. 42, “but the distance seemed long to them,” referring to those who were called upon to join in the expedition to Tâbûk), until when we had reached the city of the Prophet, and obtained our desire from the visitation, he set out Syriawards, and I towards ‘Irâk, he veered to the West, and I to the East.