Laid his dust, and let his spittle subside.—These metaphors express the cessation from vehement utterance.
Gazed on his up-rising.—
To move away from the midst.—To fly away, or aberrate from the centre. An allusion to the scientific expression.
A bucket from his stream.—The use of metaphors from the drawing of water, from rain or dew, to express the bestowing of bounty, are continually to be met with in Ḥarîri, as in all Arabic poets. The ancient Arabs, whose poets set fashions of literary diction which have never been departed from, were natives of the Nejd and other regions where the want of water was continually felt, and they spoke to a race whose lives were passed in anxiety lest their corn and herbage should be destroyed, their homes made uninhabitable by a year of drought, and their journeys perilous by the drying up of wells. Hence in poetical language, water and moisture are almost synonymous with benefit; to seek bounty is to go to the spring, to confer it is to fill the bucket or the skin-bag of the suppliant. It is in accordance with this sentiment that “cloud” has in Arabic poetry a favourable signification, while unbroken sunshine represents suffering and protracted misfortune; a use of similitude the very opposite to our own. To say “A cloud gathered over my life” would mean to an Englishman that distress or poverty fell upon it; to an Arab it would mean that success, or a wealthy benefactor had raised the speaker to competence. To forecast the rains by watching the form of the clouds and the lightning, is a phrase used in the same metaphorical manner, and you may say, “I watched the lightning” of such a one, with the meaning “I took notice of him to learn whether he was likely to confer a benefit on me.” Fortune, or a deceitful friend, are described as a cloud whose flash deceives; the prosperous are a well-watered meadow, and their life is a moistened one. A peculiarity of the Semitic languages is the clearness with which they show the original material signification of words, under their secondary and metaphorical meanings, and this is nowhere more remarkable than in the constant association of water with comfort, good fortune, bounty, wealth, and similar ideas.
An Attendant.—
Thy reality.—
But when.—For the use of
I don the black robe.—The metre of these lines is the
The only
This licence is so common that, in many compositions, almost every line is thus shortened. It will be seen that this is the case with all the author’s lines, except the first and fourth.
The khamîṣah is described as a black square garment, having two ornamental borders; if it has not the borders it is not called by this name. It is, however, evidently used here to signify a garment worn by pilgrims or devotees.
My meal.—Khabîṣah is a mess of khabîṣ, or dates and butter, a common article of food among the poor.
The lion of the thicket.—“As one who seeks his prey in the lion’s lair” is a proverbial expression for the rushing into danger in pursuit of an object, and is derived from the verse of a poet:
O Ṭayya of the field and the mountains; he who threatens you is as one who seeks the prey in the lion’s lair. (Prov. Arab. II. 359).
My loin quiver at it.—More exactly the muscles of the shoulders, the part between the shoulder and the side. Compare Mo‘allaḳah of Ṭarafeh, v. 101.
On the field of battle, where man dreads death, where the shoulder muscles quiver, wedged together in the strife.