Very sadly, Abu Midjan,
  Hanging down his head for shame,
Spake in words of soft appealing
  To the tender-hearted dame: 

“Lady, while the doubtful battle
  Ebbs and flows upon the plains,
Here in sorrow, meek and idle,
  Abu Midjan sits in chains.

“Surely Saad would be safer
  For the strength of even me;
Give me then his armour, Lady,
  And his horse, and set me free.

“When the day of fight is over,
  With the spoil that he may earn,
To his chains, if he is living,
  Abu Midjan will return.”

She, in wonder and compassion,
  Had not heart to say him nay;
So, with Saad’s horse and armour,
  Abu Midjan rode away.

Happy from the fight at even,
  Saad told his wife at meat,
How the army had been succoured
  In the fiercest battle-heat,

By a stranger horseman, coming
  When their hands were most in need,
And he bore the arms of Saad,
  And was mounted on his steed;

How the faithful battled forward,
  Mighty where the stranger trod,
Till they deemed him more than mortal,
  And an angel sent from God.

Then the lady told her master
  How she gave the horse and mail
To the drunkard, and had taken
  Abu Midjan’s word for bail.

To the garden went the Emir,
  Running to the tree, and found
Torn with many wounds and bleeding,
  Abu Midjan meek and bound.

And the Emir loosed him, saying,
  As he gave his hand for sign,
“Never more shall Saad’s fetters
  Chafe thee for a draught of wine.”

Three times to the ground in silence
  Abu Midjan bent his head;
Then with glowing eyes uplifted,
  To the Emir spake and said: 

“While an earthly lord controlled me,
  All things for the wine I bore;
Now, since God alone shall judge me,
  Abu Midjan drinks no more.”

THE WEAVER

All day, all day, round the clacking net
  The weaver’s fingers fly: 
Gray dreams like frozen mists are set
  In the hush of the weaver’s eye;
A voice from the dusk is calling yet,
  “Oh, come away, or we die!”

Without is a horror of hosts that fight,
  That rest not, and cease not to kill,
The thunder of feet and the cry of the flight,
  A slaughter weird and shrill;
Gray dreams are set in the weaver’s sight,
  The weaver is weaving still.

“Come away, dear soul, come away or we die;
  Hear’st thou the moan and the rush!  Come away;
The people are slain at the gates, and they fly;
  The kind God hath left them this day;
The battle-axes cleaves, and the foemen cry,
  And the red swords swing and slay.”

“Nay, wife, what boots to fly from pain,
  When pain is wherever we fly? 
And death is a sweeter thing than a chain: 
  ’Tis sweeter to sleep than to cry,
The kind God giveth the days that wane;
  If the kind God hath said it, I die.”