Abkat ghadan bu’dan lahá min dári.
In Sir Richard Burton’s translation (vol. iii. [319]):—
O thou who woo’st a World unworthy, learn ✿ ’Tis house of evils, ’tis Perdition’s net:
A house where whoso laughs this day shall weep ✿ The next; then perish house of fume and fret.
The ’Arúz of the first couplet is Mutafá’ilun, assigning the piece to the first or perfect (sahíhah) class of the Kámil. In the Hashw of the opening line and in that of the whole second Bayt this normal Mutafá’ilun has, by license, become Mustaf’ilun, and the same change has taken place in the ’Arúz of the second couplet; for it is a peculiarity which this metre shares with a few others, to allow certain alterations of the kind Zuháf in the ’Arúz and Zarb as well as in the Hashw. This class has three subdivisions: the Zarb of the first is Mutafá’ilun, like the ’Arúz; the Zarb of the second is Fa’alátun (⏑ ⏑ ‑ ‑), a substitution for Mutafá’il which latter is obtained from Mutafá’ilun by suppressing the final n and rendering the l quiescent; the Zarb of the third is Fa’lun (‑ ‑) for Mútfá, derived from Mutafá’ilun by cutting off the Watad ’ilun and dropping the medial a of the remaining Mutafá.
If we make the ’Ayn of the second Zarb Fa’alátun also quiescent by the permitted Zuháf Izmár, it changes into Fa’látun, by substitution Maf’úlun (‑ ‑ ‑) which terminates the rhyming lines of the foregoing quotation. Consequently the two couplets taken together, belong to the second Zarb of the first ’Arúz of the Kámil, and the metre of the poem with its licenses may be represented by the scheme:
| ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | |
| ⏑ ⏑ ‑ ⏑ ‑ | ⏑ ⏑ ‑ ⏑ ‑ | ⏑ ⏑ ‑ ⏑ ‑ | |
| ‑ | ‑ | ‑ | |
| ⏑ ⏑ ‑ ⏑ ‑ | ⏑ ⏑ ‑ ⏑ ‑ | ⏑ ⏑ ‑ ‑ |
Taken isolated, on the other hand, the second Bayt might be of the metre Rajaz, whose first ’Arúz Mustaf’ilun has two Azrub: one equal to the Arúz, the other Maf’úlun as above, but here substituted for Mustaf’il after applying the ’Illah Kat’ (see p. [288]) to Mustaf’ilun. If this were the metre of the poem throughout, the scheme with the licenses peculiar to the Rajaz would be:
| ⏑ ⏑ | ⏑ ⏑ | ⏑ ⏑ | |
| ‑ ‑ ⏑ ‑ | ‑ ‑ ⏑ ‑ | ‑ ‑ ⏑ ‑ | |
| ⏑ ⏑ | ⏑ ⏑ | ⏑ | |
| ‑ ‑ ⏑ ‑ | ‑ ‑ ⏑ ‑ | ‑ ‑ ‑ |
The pith of Al-Hariri’s Assembly is that the knight errant, not to say the arrant wight of the Romance, Abú Sayd of Sarúj, accuses before the Wáli of Baghdad his pretended pupil, in reality his son, to have appropriated a poem of his by lopping off two feet of every Bayt. If this is done in the quoted lines, they read: