فيروز - حبيتك بالصيف

بأيام البرد و أيام الشتي
و الرصيف بحيرة و الشارع غريب
تجي هاك البنت من بيتها العتيق
و يقلا انطريني و تنطرعالطريق
و يروح و ينساها و تدبل بالشتي

حبيتك بالصيف حبيتك بالشتي
نطرتك بالصيف نطرتك بالشتي
و عيونك الصيف و عيوني الشتي
ملقانا يا حبيبي خلف الصيف و خلف الشتي

مرقت الغريبة عطيتني رسالة
كتبها حبيبي بالدمع الحزين
فتحت الرسالة حروفها ضايعين
و مرقت أيام و غربتنا سنين
و حروف الرسالة محيها الشتي

The Love Song of Har Dyal

Alone upon the housetops to the North
I turn and watch the lightnings in the sky--
The glamour of thy footsteps in the North.
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die.

Below my feet the still bazar is laid--
Far, far below the weary camels lie--
The camels and the captives of thy raid.
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

My father's wife is old and harsh with years,
And drudge of all my father's house am I--
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears.
Come back to me, Beloved, or I die!

Rudyard Kipling

The Mare's Nest

Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse
  Was good beyond all earthly need;
But, on the other hand, her spouse
  Was very, very bad indeed.
He smoked cigars, called churches slow,
And raced -- but this she did not know.

For Belial Machiavelli kept
  The little fact a secret, and,
Though o'er his minor sins she wept,
  Jane Austen did not understand
That Lilly -- thirteen-two and bay
Absorbed one-half her husband's pay.

She was so good, she made hime worse;
  (Some women are like this, I think;)
He taught her parrot how to curse,
  Her Assam monkey how to drink.
He vexed her righteous soul until
She went up, and he went down hill.

Then came the crisis, strange to say,
  Which turned a good wife to a better.
A telegraphic peon, one day,
  Brought her -- now, had it been a letter
For Belial Machiavelli, I
Know Jane would just have let it lie.

But 'twas a telegram instead,
  Marked "urgent," and her duty plain
To open it. Jane Austen read:
  "Your Lilly's got a cough again.
Can't understand why she is kept
At your expense." Jane Austen wept.

It was a misdirected wire.
  Her husband was at Shaitanpore.
She spread her anger, hot as fire,
  Through six thin foreign sheets or more.
Sent off that letter, wrote another
To her solicitor -- and mother.

Then Belial Machiavelli saw
  Her error and, I trust, his own,
Wired to the minion of the Law,
  And traveled wifeward -- not alone.
For Lilly -- thirteen-two and bay --
Came in a horse-box all the way.

There was a scene -- a weep or two --
  With many kisses. Austen Jane
Rode Lilly all the season through,
  And never opened wires again.
She races now with Belial. This
Is very sad, but so it is.

Harp Song of the Dane Women

What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in --
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But  the  ten-times-fingering weed  to hold you --
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken --

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables --
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker ?