Upon my breast she hung.
My willing arms embrac'd the maid,
My heart with raptures beat;
While she but wept the more, and said,
Would we had never met.”
In these times, when from the difference of manners, and a variety of other circumstances and causes, even the most successful poets cannot boast of the friendship, and profuse liberality of kings, the manner in which the monarchs of the East rewarded them, is almost incredible. The presents, which Abou Teman Habib, a native of Damascus, but who spent his life chiefly at the court of Bagdad, is reported to have received, are enormous. He is said to have had a present of fifty thousand pieces of gold for a single poem. He died before he was forty, and his early death was predicted by a contemporary writer, in these words: “The mind of Abou Teman must soon wear out his body, as the blade of an Indian scimitar destroys its scabbard.” When his mistress accused him of extravagance, he addressed her in the following words:
Ungenerous and mistaken maid,
To scorn me thus because I'm poor!
Canst thou a liberal hand upbraid
For dealing round some worthless ore?