Chapter I: Story on Kindness to the Poor when you have plenty

Such a famine, one year, in Damascus arose,That friends passed each other, as if they were foes.The sky had so miserly been to the ground,That moisture on fields or on palms was not found.The fountains, that long had existed, were dry ;No water, save that in the orphan boy's eye.If smoke from a chimney arose to the sky,It was only the poor widow woman's sad sigh.I saw that the trees, like the poor, were stripped bare ;That the strong armed were weak and in wretched despair.The hills showed no verdure, the gardens no shoots ;The locusts ate gardens, and men ate those brutes.I met an old friend, in this season of moans ;His body had shrivelled to skin and to bones.I was greatly surprised, for his means were not small ;He had rank, and had money, and stores at his call.I said :—" Oh companion ! of character pure,Explain the affliction you have to endure !"He roared at me, saying, " Oh where is your sense?When you know and you ask, you commit an offence.Don't you see that affliction has reached to excess ;That no bounds can restrict the amount of distress.From the heav'ns there descends not a shower of rain ;Not a sigh goes aloft from the poor who complain."I replied :—"You at least have no reason to fear—The poison destroys when no antidote's near—If another through want has been vanquished by death,You have food; does the duck heed the hurricane's breath ?"The holy man gave me a look, full of pain ;Like the look of the wise on the ignorant swain ;Saying, "Friend! though a man the sea-shore may have found,He does not rejoice, when his comrades are drowned.Not from absence of means has my face become pale ;Concern for the starving has made my heart quail.I do not desire that a wise man should scanA wound on his limbs, or the limbs of a man.And praise be to God ; though from wounds I am free,My body still shakes, if a wound I should see.Imbittered's the joy of a man who is well,Who alongside a paralyzed patient must dwell.When I see the necessitous poor go unfed,On my palate, like poison and dregs is my bread.If you carry one's friends to a dungeon and chains,What pleasure for him in the garden remains ?"