124 
C. J. Lyall— Translations from the Hamaseh. 
[No. 2, 
v. 7. “ The weaver’s comb:” es-sayasi, plural of sisiyeh , which is 
the comb used by the weaver to push up the threads of the woof into the 
web, so as to make the fabric close. 
v. 8. 11 A camel,” ctat-el-bawivi : the bawiv is the stuffed skin of a 
young camel (or with a cow, a calf,) cast before a she-camel who has lost 
her young one in order to induce a flow of milk. 
y. 12. “ Alert, keen, his loins well girt”—all one attempt to render 
kemish-el- izar. Kemish means properly light, quick, active, and is joined 
to '’izar (the trailing waistcloth with which an Arab girt himself, loose and 
flowing in peace, tightly wound and raised in war or serious business) by a 
contracted construction of which examples are frequent. “ His leg to the 
middle bare,” as would naturally be the result of girding up the ’izar. “A 
climber to all things high:” tailed w ’anjudi, a proverbial phrase for a man 
who seeks fame and glory. This verse is found with another reading later 
on in the Hamaseh (p. 765) 
% • j 
Qasiru-l-’izdri, khdrijun nisfu sdqihi , 
saburun ‘ala-l-azzai, tailedu 'anjudi 
“ with his izar girt up short, his leg bare up to the middle, 
patient in face of hardship, a climber to all things high.” 
v. 17. This most touching line has been appropriated by another 
poet, a contemporary of, but considerably younger than, Dureyd, Sakhr son 
of ‘Amr, of the Benu Suleym, brother of the poetess el-Khansa whom 
Dureyd wooed. In a lament over his brother Mo‘awiyeh, given in the 
Hamaseh, p. 489, he says— 
Watayyaba nefsi ’annani lam ’aqul lahu 
kectebta, ivalam ’ abkhal ‘aleyhi bimdliyd . 
VI. 
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