C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Katari ibn al-Fujâ’ah, ibn Ma’zin: Fatality

From the ‘Hamásah’: Translation of Sir Charles James Lyall

I SAID to her, when she fled in amaze and breathless

before the array of battle, “Why dost thou tremble?

Yea, if but a day of Life thou shouldst beg with weeping,

beyond what thy Doom appoints, thou wouldst not gain it!

Be still, then; and face the onset of Death, high-hearted,

for none upon earth shall win to abide forever.

No raiment of praise the cloak of old age and weakness;

none such for the coward who bows like a reed in the tempest.

The pathway of death is set for all men to travel.

the crier of Death proclaims through the earth his empire.

Who dies not when young and sound, dies old and weary—

cut off in his length of days from all love and kindness;

And what for a man is left of delight of living,—

past use—flung away—a worthless and worn-out chattel?”