These measures are scanned by feet, as in the Greek and Latin systems, and from the length of the Arab lines are often much more opposed to the English than hexameter, elegiac, or alcæic. In fact, the attempt to exactly reproduce Arab forms of poetry in English is based on a mistaken view of poetical form as something which has no necessary connection with the structure of languages. We shall, therefore, offer the following poem in a metre not unfamiliar to English ears, yet not very widely removed from the Arabic measure if the reader bears in mind that two lines of the English will generally correspond to one in the Arabic. Goethe, in his West-Oestlicher Divan, translated the poem into German from the Latin of Schultens, and though the effort to reproduce the Arab metre would have been much easier in German than in English, he has made no attempt of the kind.
Lies a man whose blood drips vengeance.
He has left the burden to me,
And I lightly lift and bear it—
Heritage of bloodshed for me,
Fearless son of his own sister—
One whose grip none loses lightly,
One whose downcast eyes are dripping
Poison like the hooded asp.
Ah! the fearful tale has reached us,
Saddest tale that ever sped!
One whose friend none dared belittle
Tyrant Fate has severed from us;
Sunshine he in wintry season;
When the dog-star burned, a shadow;
Lean he was, but not from lacking,
Open-handed, open-hearted;
Where he journeyed, where he halted,
Wariness and he were banded;
When he gave, a rushing rain-flood;
When he sprang, a mighty lion;
Black his hair among his kindred
Flowed, and trailed his robe of peace;[1]
But in war a thin-flanked wolf-whelp;
- ↑ In peace the Arabs allowed their izár, or waistwrapper, to trail on the ground; in war it was girt tightly about their loins—a practice of the desert reminding us of the Roman "girding up his gown."
