Al Harith, son of Hammam, related: I was set with some comrades in a company wherein he that made appeal was never bootless, and the rubbing of the fire-shafts never failed, and the flame of contention never blazed. And while we were catching from each other the cues of recitations, and betaking ourselves to novelties of anecdote, behold there stood by us one on whom was a worn garment, and in whose walk was a limp. And he said, O ye best of treasures, joys of your kindred: Health to you this morning; may ye enjoy your morning draught. Look on one who was erewhile master of guest-room and largess, wealth and bounty, land and villages, dishes and feasting. But the frowning of calamities ceased not from him, and the warrings of sorrows, and the fire-flakes of the malice of the envious, and the succession of dark befallings, until the court was empty, and the yard was bare, and the fountain sank, and the dwelling was desolate, and the hall was void, and the chamber stone-strewed. And fortune shifted so that the household wailed; and the stalls were vacant, so that the rival had compassion; and the cattle and the goods they perished, so that the envious and malignant pitied. And to such a pass did we come, through assailing fortune and prostrating need, that we were shod with soreness, and fed on choking, and filled our bellies with ache, and wrapped our entrails upon hunger, and anointed our eyes with watching, and made pits our home, and deemed thorns a smooth bed, and came to forget our saddles, and thought destroying death to be sweet, and the ordained day to be tardy. And now is there any one generous to heal, bountiful to bestow? For by him who made me to spring from Kaylah, surely I am now a brother of penury, I have not a night's victual.
Said Al Harith, son of Hammam: Now I pitied his distresses, and inclined to the eliciting of his rhymes. So I drew forth for him a denar, and said to him, to prove him, "If thou praise it in verse it is thine, full surely." And he betook himself to recite on the spot, borrowing nothing:
How noble is that yellow one, whose yellowness is pure,
Which traverses the regions, and whose journeying is afar.
Told abroad are its fame and repute:
Its lines are set as the secret sign of wealth;
Its march is coupled with the success of endeavors;
Its bright look is loved by mankind;
As though its ore had been molten of their hearts.
By its aid whoever has gotten it in his purse assails boldly,