We bear with the dog which behaves itself ✿ But the lion is chained lest he prove a pest:
And the desert carcases swim the main ✿ While union-pearls on the sand-bank rest[[230]]:
No sparrow would hustle the sparrow-hawk, ✿ Were it not by folly and weakness prest:
A-sky is written on page of air, ✿ “Who doth kindly of kindness shall have the best!”
’Ware of gathering sugar from bitter gourd:[[231]] ✿ ’Twill prove to its origin like in taste.
After this Abu Sir abode awhile, till Allah took him to Himself, and they buried him hard by the tomb of his comrade Abu Kir; wherefore that place was called Abu Kir and Abu Sir; but it is now known as Abu Kir only. This, then, is that which hath reached us of their history, and glory be to Him who endureth for ever and aye and by whose will interchange the night and the day. And of the stories they tell is one anent
[184]. Abú Sír is a manifest corruption of the old Egyptian Pousiri, the Busiris of our classics, and it gives a name to sundry villages in modern Egypt where it is usually pronounced “Búsír.” Abú Kír lit. = the Father of Pitch, is also corrupted to Abou Kir (Bay); and the townlet now marks the site of jolly old Canopus, the Chosen Land of Egyptian debauchery.
[185]. It is interesting to note the superior gusto with which the Eastern, as well as the Western tale-teller describes his scoundrels and villains whilst his good men and women are mostly colourless and unpicturesque. So Satan is the true hero of Paradise-Lost and by his side God and man are very ordinary; and Mephistopheles is much better society than Faust and Margaret.
[186]. Arab. “Dukhán,” lit. = smoke, here tobacco for the Chibouk, “Timbák” or “Tumbák” being the stronger (Persian and other) variety which must be washed before smoking in the Shíshah or water-pipe. Tobacco is mentioned here only and is evidently inserted by some scribe: the “weed” was not introduced into the East before the end of the sixteenth century (about a hundred years after coffee), when it radically changed the manners of society.