VII.
A learned man relates the following: 'I stood with a friend on a road conversing with him when a woman halted opposite to me, looking at me steadfastly. When this staring had passed all bounds, I despatched my slave to ask the woman what she was listening to. He came back and reported that the woman had said: "My eyes had committed a great sin. I intended to inflict a punishment upon them, and could devise none worse than looking at that hideous face."'
There are some good verses in the Arabic descriptive of the places where certain Arabs wished to be buried. It was Abu Mihjan, the Thackifite, who chose the vineyard.
'Bury me, when I die, by the roots of the vine,
The moisture thereof will distil into my bones;
Bury me not in the open plain, for then I much fear
That no more again shall I taste the flavour of the grape.'
Another version:
'When the Death angel cometh mine eyes to close,
Dig my grave 'mid the vines on the hill's fair side;
For though deep in earth may my bones repose,
The juice of the grape shall their food provide.
Oh, bury me not in a barren land,
Or Death will appear to me dread and drear!
While fearless I'll wait what he hath in hand
If the scent of the vineyard my spirit cheer.'
On the other hand, some of the wild people prefer the hill slopes, and an example is given in the address of the dying Bedouin to his tribe:
'O bear with you my bones where the camel bears his load,
And bury me before you, if buried I must be;
And let me not be buried 'neath the burden of the vine,
But high upon the hill whence your sight I ever see!
As you pass along my grave cry aloud, and name your names,
The crying of your names shall revive the bones of me,
I have fasted through my life with my friends, and in my
death
I will feast when we meet on that day of joy and glee.'
The French poet, Alfred de Musset's, gentle verses in his elegy to
Lucie, and which have been engraved on his tomb in Paris, at
Père-Lachaise, run as follows:
'When I shall die, dear friends, aslant
My silent grave a willow plant;
I love its foliage weeping near,
To me its colour's sweet and dear;
Its shadow gray will lightly fall
Upon my tomb—a mourning pall,
And will likewise do the keeping
Of the ground where I am sleeping.'