THE PRB-ROMANTICS 104have glimpsed it incapable of coping with this mundane world. The poem
clearly shows Shukri's ambivalent attitude to imagination which we have
already encountered in his book of Confessions: he is both fascinated and
frightened by it: 'lost is the man whose fancy is his guide'; it was left for a
later, younger generation of more thorough-going romantics to accept imagi-
nation without any reserve. In 'The Mouthpiece of the Invisible' (p. 128)
true imagination is said to be the mouthpiece of the invisible; and because
the poet feels and suffers he sees what others cannot see and communes with
the Divine. likewise, 'Death and Imagination' (p. 153) shows the value of the
imagination in conferring beauty on life, making both life and death easier
to bear:
There is in poetry many a pleasurable dream
Which enables us to endure life or death.
The poet's vision can be a source of bliss: 'The Angels' Visit' (p. 480), for ex-
ample, describes the poet, uncertain whether he was awake or asleep, receiv-
ing a host of angels who cure him of his despair, purify his soul and give
him a moment of eternity. But visions can also be a source of terror. For in-
stance in 'A Step away from the World of the Senses' (p. 419) the poet while
awake dreams that he has departed from the world of the senses, but the
fearful vision he sees which indicates to him the full extent of the dominion
of death, drives him to seek frantically to return to the real world and after
several unsuccessful attempts he manages to do so. He wishes he would never
again in his life have a similar experience and advises others never to stray
from the concrete and secure world of the senses. Moreover, in 'The Shadow
of Madness' (p. 402) the poet feels the constant presence of the image of the
beloved to be painfully oppressive, like an obsession or a disease and wishes
in vain he could break free from his enthralment.
There are perhaps too many poems about the theme of idealized love in
Shukri's work, and their cumulative effect tends to be rather monotonous,
especially as the tone is generally solemn and unrelieved by any humour.
Furthermore, they are mostly in the first person: there is not enough variety in
them which could have been achieved if the poet had made a greater use of
the narrative and dramatic poems. Not that Shukri's poetry is entirely lacking
in formal variety. He uses the narrative and the dramatic monologue deriving
his material from well known pre-Islamic Arabic stories and legends, or from
more modern sources (pp. 142, 156,180,201,205). He experiments in the use
of the multiple rhyme, the alternate rhyme or rhyming couplet. He even
attempts to write blank (rhymeless) verse on a number of occasions (pp. 200,
201, 203, 205), though the result cannot be described as successful, and in one