"On the fifth day I quitted al my friends for evermore, * And they laid me out and washed me on a slab without my door:[FN#22] They stripped me of the clothes I was ever wont to wear, * And they clothed me in the clothes which till then I never wore. On four men's necks they bore me and carried me from home * To chapel; and some prayed for him on neck they bore: They prayed for me a prayer that no prostration knows;[FN#23] * They prayed for me who praisèd me and were my friends of yore; And they laid me in a house with a ceiling vaulted o'er, * And Time shall be no more ere it ope to me its door." When they had shovelled in the dust over him and the crowd had dispersed, Nur al-Din returned home and he lamented with sobs and tears; and the tongue of the case repeated these couplets, "On the fifth day at even-tide they went away from me: * I farewelled them as faring they made farewell my lot: But my spirit as they went, with them went and so I cried, * 'Ah return ye!' but replied she, 'Alas! return is not To a framework lere and lorn that lacketh blood and life, * A frame whereof remaineth naught but bones that rattle and rot: Mine eyes are blind and cannot see quencht by the flowing tear! * Mine ears are dull and lost to sense: they have no power to hear!'" He abode a long time sorrowing for his father till, one day, as he was sitting at home, there came a knocking at the door; so he rose in haste and opening let in a man, one of his father's intimates and who had been the Wazir's boon-companion. The visitor kissed Nur al-Din's hand and said to him, "O my lord, he who hath left the like of thee is not dead; and this way went also the Chief of the Ancients and the Moderns. [FN#24] O my lord Ali, be comforted and leave sorrowing." Thereupon Nur al-Din rose and going to the guest-saloon transported thither all he needed. Then he assembled his companions and took his handmaid again; and, collecting round him ten of the sons of the merchants, began to eat meat and drink wine, giving entertainment after entertainment and lavishing his presents and his favours. One day his Steward came to him and said, "O my lord Nur al-Din, hast thou not heard the saying, Whoso spendeth and reckoneth not, to poverty wendeth and recketh not?" And he repeated what the poet wrote,