NOTES TO THE QUATRAINS
I
To open a poem with a few amatory lines, is a literary tradition among Arab poets. But Abu'l-Ala, having had no occasion to evince such tender emotions, whether real or merely academic, succeeded, as in everything else he did, in deviating from the trodden path. I find, however, in his minor Diwan, Suct uz-Zand, a slight manifestation of his youthful ardor, of which this and the succeeding quatrains, descriptive of the charms of Night, are fairly representative.
III
"Ahmad," Mohammed the Prophet.
IV
"And hear the others who with cymbals try," etc., meaning the Christians; in the preceding quatrain he referred to the Mohammedans.
VII
Milton, in II Penseroso, also speaks of night as the starred Ethiop queen"; and Shakespeare, in Romeo and Juliet, has these lines:
"Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop ear."
The source of inspiration is the same to all world-poets, who only differ sometimes in the jars they bring to the source.
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