being deceived
by him in the sum she would have to pay, he entered the mosque with his
thoughts occupied on the subject, and he there struck against a pillar,
which his preoccupation hindered him from perceiving. The violence of
the shock threw him on his back, and death was the result."

Al-Khalil used to remark that a man's reason and intelligence reached
perfection when he attained the age of forty, the age of the Prophet
when God sent him forth on his mission; but that they undergo alteration
and diminution when the man reaches sixty, the age in which God took the
Prophet's soul to himself. He said, again, that the intelligence is
clearest at the dawn of day.

VI.--A GROUP OF POETS

No matter what the profession or calling of these Persians--whether they
were lawyers or lawgivers, grammarians or warriors--they all, or almost
all, adored verbal felicity and tried their hands at verse. Poetry may
be called the gold dust on their lives.

Ibn Nubata the poet knew how to say thank you. Saif Ad-Dawlat Ibn Hamdan
having given him a horse, this is how he acknowledged it: _O prince!
thou whose generous qualities are the offspring of thy natural
disposition, and whose pleasing aspect is the emblem of thy mind, I have
received the present which thou sentest me, a noble steed whose portly
neck seems to unite the heavens to the earth on which he treads. Hast
thou then conferred a government upon me, since thou sendest me a spear
to which a flowing mane serves as a banner? We take possession of what
thou hast conferred and find it to be a horse whose forehead and legs
are marked with white, and whose body is so black that a single hair
extracted from that colour would suffice to form night's darkest shades.
It would seem that the morning had struck him on the forehead and thus
made it white, for which reason he took his revenge by wading into the
entrails of the morning, and thus whitening his legs. He paces slowly,
yet one of his names is Lightning; he wears a veil, having his face
covered with white, as if to conceal it, and yet beauty itself would be
his only rival. Had the sun and the moon a portion only of his ardour,
it would be impossible to withstand their heat. The eye cannot follow
his movements, unless you rein him in and restrain his impetuosity. The
glances of the eye cannot seize all his perfections, unless the eye be
led away captive by his beauty and be thus enabled to follow him._--I
like the extravagance