bn Khallikan. He tells us how the poet once recited
verses in the presence of some people, and how one of them was a
philosopher who said, "This man will not live long, for I have
seen in him a sharpness of wit and penetration and intelligence.
From this I know that the mind will consume the body, even as a
sword of Indian steel eats through its scabbard." Still, in
Arabia, where swords were so generally used that a priest would
strap one to his belt before he went into the pulpit, there was
no unanimous opinion as to the polishing,--which, by the way, was
done with wood. A poet boasted that his sword was often or was
rarely polished, according as he wished to emphasise the large
amount of work accomplished or the excellence of the polishing.
Imru'al-Kais says that his sword does not recall the day when it
was polished. Another poet says his sword is polished every day
and "with a fresh tooth bites off the people's heads."[15] This
vigour of expression was not only used for concrete subjects.
There exists a poem, dating from a little time before Mahomet,
which says that cares (_quatrain_ 62) are like the camels,
roaming in the daytime on the distant pastures and at night
returning to the camp. They would collect as warriors round the
flag. It was the custom for each family to have a flag
(_quatrain_ 65), a cloth fastened to a lance, round which it
gathered. Mahomet's big standard was called the Eagle,--and, by
the bye, his seven swords had names, such as "possessor of the
spine."

With _quatrain_ 68 we may compare the verses of a Christian poet,
quoted by Tabari:

And where is now the lord of Hadr, he that built it and laid
taxes on the land of Tigris?
A house of marble he established, whereof the covering was
made of plaster; in the galbes were nests of birds.
He feared no sorry fate. See, the dominion of him has departed.
Loneliness is on his threshold.

"Consider how you treat the poor," said Dshafer ben Mahomet, who
pilgrimaged from Mecca to Baghdad between fifty and sixty times;
"they are the treasures of this world, the keys of the other."
Take care lest it befall you as the prince (_quatrain_ 69) within
whose palace now the wind is reigning. "If a prince would be
successful," says Machiavelli, "it is requisite that he should
have a spirit capable of turns and variations, in accordance with
the variations of the wind." Says an Arab mystic, "The sighing of
a poor man for that which he can n