Whoever Peruses The Suspended Poem Of
Labid, Will Find Thoughts At Once So Plaintive And So Noble, That Even
Dr. Carlyle’S Learned Verse Cannot Wholly Deface Their Charm.
The warrior-bard returns from afar.
He looks upon the traces of hearth
and home still furrowing the Desert ground. In bitterness of spirit he
checks himself from calling aloud upon his lovers and his friends. He
melts at the remembrance of their departure, and long indulges in the
absorbing theme. Then he strengthens himself by the thought of Nawara’s
inconstancy, how she left him and never thought of him again. He
impatiently dwells upon the charms of the places which detain her,
advocates flight from the changing lover and the false friend, and, in
the exultation with which he feels his swift dromedary start under him
upon her rapid course, he seems to seek and finds some consolation for
women’s perfidy and forgetfulness. Yet he cannot abandon Nawara’s name or
memory. Again he dwells with yearning upon scenes of past felicity, and
he boasts of his prowess—a fresh reproach to her,—of his gentle birth, and
of his hospitality. He ends with an encomium upon his clan, to which he
attributes, as a noble Arab should, all the virtues of man. This is
Goldsmith’s deserted village in Al-Hijaz. But the Arab, with equal
simplicity and pathos, has a fire, a force of language, and a depth of
feeling, which the Irishman, admirable as his verse is, could never
rival.
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