ON THE TOMB OF SAYID
by: Abd Almalec Alharithy
- LEST are
the tenants of the tomb!
- With envy I their lot survey;
- For SAYID shares the solemn gloom,
- And mingles with their mouldering clay.
-
- Dear youth! I'm doom'd thy loss to mourn
- When gathering ills around combine;
- And whither now shall MALEC turn,
- Where look for any help but thine?
-
- At this dread moment when the foe
- My life with rage insatiate seeks,
- In vain I strive to ward the blow,
- My buckler falls, my sabre breaks.
-
- Upon thy grassy tomb I knelt,
- And sought from pain a short relief--
- Th' attempt was vain -- I only felt
- Intenser pangs and livelier grief.
-
- The bud of woe no more represt,
- Fed by the tears that drench'd it there,
- Shot forth and fill'd my labouring breast
- Ready to blossom in despair.
-
- But tho' of SAYID I'm bereft,
- From whom the stream of bounty came,
- SAYID a nobler meed has left--
- Th' exhaustless heritage of fame.
-
- Tho' mute the lips on which I hung,
- Their silence speaks more loud to me
- Than any voice from mortal tongue,
- "What SAYID was let MALEC be."
"On the Tomb of Sayid"
is reprinted from Specimens of Arabian Poetry, From the Earliest
Time to the Extinction of the Khaliphat. Trans. J.D. Carlyle.
Cambridge: John Burges, 1796. |
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