التاريخ اليميني 19.21

19.21

The bearer of the death-news reached the Sultan, and the loss of his uncle grieved him as a father is grieved by the loss of his only son, or a son by the loss of his father's brother. From what had befallen at Ibn Khalaf's hands he inferred that misery was closing [112b] in on him and his father and that calamity would engulf him and those about him; and he surmised that the cow digs up the knife with her horns, that the ant is doomed when her wings sprout, and that were the moth wise, [it would not, as long as it lived, make its way] to the light of a fire, nor rush headlong into a place of ruin: