"In the ages before the Prophet your fathers spoke as you do and in the same language, but we who do not know your ways have lost the meaning of the words they used. Now tell me what is so-and-so, and so-and-so?"
The men round the fire bent forward, and when a flame jumped up I saw their dark faces as they listened, and answered:
"By God! did they say that before the Prophet?"
"Māsha'llah! we use that word still. It is the mark on the ground where the tent was pitched."
Thus encouraged I quoted the couplet of Imr ul Ḳais which G̣ablān's utterance had suggested.
"Stay! let us weep the memory of the Beloved and her resting place in the cleft of the shifting sands 'twixt ēd Dujēl and Haumal."
G̣ablān, by the tent pole, lifted his head and exclaimed: "Māsha'llah! that is 'Antara."
All poetry is ascribed to 'Antara by the unlettered Arab; he knows no other name in literature.
I answered: "No; 'Antara spoke otherwise. He said: 'Have the poets aforetime left ought to be added by me? or dost thou remember her house when thou lookest on the place?' And Lebīd spoke best of all when he said: 'And what is man but a tent and the folk thereof? one day they depart and the place is left desolate.'"
G̣ablān made a gesture of assent.