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THE
POEM
OF
ANTARA.
THE ARGUMENT.
THIS Poem appears (o have been a litlle older than that of Zohair; for it must have been composed during the wart of Dahis, which the maEnanimity of the two chiefs, extolled by Zohair, "so noblj' terminated," Antara, the gallant Absite, distinguished himself very early in the war by his valour in altacking the tribe of Dhobyan, and boasts in this composition that he had slain Demdem, the father of Ho^in and of Harem, whom Ward, the son of Habes, afterwards put to death. An oll enmity subsisted, it seems, between our poet and those Iwa young men, who, as Aniara believed, had calumniated him without provocation; and his chief object in this poem was to blaion his own achievements and exploits, and to denounce implacable resentment against the calumniators, whom his menaces were likely to intimidate. Vet so harsh an argument is tempered by a strain in some parts elegiac and amatory; for even this vengeful impetuous warrior found himself obliged Jo comply with the custom of the Arabian poets, " who had Icfl," as he complains, " little new imagery for their successors."
