The Adieu - Abou Mohammed

The boatmen shout, "'Tis time to part,

No longer can we stay;"—

'Twas then Maimuna taught my heart 

How much a glance could say.

With trembling steps to me she came; 

"Farewell!" she would have cried; 

But ere her lips the word could frame 

In half-form'd sounds it died. 

Then bending down with looks of love, 

Her arms she round me flung, 

And, as the gale hangs on the grove, 

Upon my breast she hung. 

My willing arms embraced the maid; 

My heart with raptures beat; 

While she but wept the more, and said, 

"Would we had never met!"

---

Abou Mohammed (9th century) Iraq

Translated by Joseph Dacre Carlyle

Source: Specimens of Arabian poetry, from the earliest time to the extinction of the Khaliphat, with some account of the authors, by Joseph Dacre Carlyle, Lunn, 1796