448 C. J. Lyall— Translations from the Hamaseh and the Aghani. [No. 4, 
10 ‘ There dies among us no lord a quiet death in his bed, 
‘ and never is blood o£ us poured forth without vengeance. 
4 Our souls stream forth in a flood from the edge of the whetted swords : 
‘ no otherwise than so does our spirit leave its mansion. 
‘ Pure is our stock, unsullied : fair is it kept and bright 
‘ by mothers whose bed bears well, and fathers mighty. 
‘ To the best of the uplands we wend, and when the season comes, 
‘ we travel adown to the best of fruitful valleys. 
‘ Like rain of the heaven are we: there is not in all our line 
‘ one blunt of heart, nor among us is counted a niggard. 
15 ‘We say nay whenso we will to the words of other men, 
‘ but no man to us says nay when we give sentence. 
‘ When passes a lord of our line, in his stead there rises straight 
‘ a lord to say the say and do the deeds of the noble. 
‘ Our beacon is never quenched to the wanderer of the night, 
‘ nor has ever a guest blamed us where men meet together. 
‘ Our Days are famous among our foemen, of fair report, 
‘ branded and blazed with glory like noble horses. 
‘ Our swords have swept throughout all lands both West and East 
‘ and gathered many a notch from the steel of hauberk-wearers; 
20 ‘Not used are they when drawn to be laid back in their sheaths 
‘ before that the folk they meet are spoiled and scattered. 
‘ If thou knowest not, ask men what they think of us and them 
‘ —not alike are he that knows and he that knows not. 
‘ The children of ed-Dayyan are the shaft of their people’s mill 
‘ —around them it turns and whirls, while they stand midmost.’ 
Notes. 
The metre is the third form of the Tawil: the first hemistich is the same as in Nos. 
II, III and IY ; hut the second is catalectic and is scanned thus :— 
KJ — — | w - I KJ — | VJ - 
This poem stands in the Hamaseh under the name of es-Semau’al son of ‘iVdiya 
the Jew, hut it is not by him; this is proved hy the mention of ‘Amir and Salul in 
verse 8, and of the Benu-d-Dayyan in v. 22. The mistake hy which it has been attri¬ 
buted to es-Semau’al arose, as pointed out hy et-Tebrizi against the passage, from v. 
6, where the mountain spoken of, which is really a metaphor for the glory and renown 
of the tribe, has been thought to be the burg el-Ablaq in Teyma, where es-Semau’al 
dwelt, and where he sheltered the kin of Imra’el-Qeys the poet against el-Harith son 
of Abu Shemir king of Ghassan. 
Of the real author nothing is known except that he belonged to the noble stock of 
ed-Dayyan : his name recurs in the Hamaseh atp. 400 as the author of a marthiyeh , 
