Go child! It is useless to beat water in order to make butter. Thou art old, and I have not yet commenced to fast during Ramadan. Thy head is grey, thy legs are feeble, thou hast lost thy wits, and talkest not of present things. That which remaineth for thee here is a tomb. As for me, I will marry him who pleaseth me.
A WOMAN’S WAR-SONG.
He who wishes to possess women, flinches not on the day of combat. He conducts himself bravely when the bullets whistle. He shall choose among the young girls. Oh, dear name of Amelkher!
TALE.
An old man had seven sons. His wife died, and he remained a widower. One day his sons were seated and talking. The youngest of them said to his brothers, ‘Come, O my brothers! let us sell some goats, and with the price of them marry our father again.’ They dropped this subject of conversation, and passed on to another.
The old man said to them, ‘Let us return to the conversation about the goats.’
The weather grew very hot, though not oppressive, for a fresh breeze sprang up in the middle of the day, and blew till four or five o’clock, a blast most grateful to perspiring mortals, but sometimes accompanied with eddies of wind, which the natives called thaboushithant.
The children, when they saw an eddy approach, would leave off their play of building villages, that is, piling stones into little heaps, with bits of stick placed upright atop to represent mosque towers, and for fun run in its way, when their burnouses, caught up and twisted, flying about their heads, would wrap them in confusion. Thus do the children indulge in the building of imagined houses, vain castle-building, for
The sportive wanton, pleased with some new play,
Sweeps the slight works and fashion’d domes away.