'AQQAD 111poet is doubly unfortunate since beauty is the main concern of a poet and it
is therefore wasted if he cannot see it. Much of'Aqqad's poetry is taken up
with his meditations on objects of nature, from birds to flowers, especially
the rose. He wrote for example on 'Autumn' (p. 27), 'Sunset on the Coast of the
Mediterranean' (p. 31), 'The Full Moon in the Desert' (p. 73), 'Nature and Life'
(p. 74), 'On the Seashore' (p. 77), "The Melancholy Spring' (p. 78), 'Roses'
(p. 94), and 'Carnations' (p. 95). Among his best nature poems are those des-
cribing winter scenes, for instance, "Winter at Aswan' (p. 72) which he con-
cludes with the thought that lie sees little who only sees what is visible to the
eye', and more particularly 'The Approach of Winter' (p. 108), where the
poet's sensitivity to the bleakness of the winter scene is eloquently expressed.
'Aqqad's power of empathy is revealed in a number of poems about birds, like
'An Aged Eagle' (p. 33) and 'The Sparrow's Life' (p. 99), in which the poet
envies the freedom and apparent joyfulness of the sparrow, but also laments
the hazards of its little life in terms which evince a real feeling for the sparrow.
But more often 'Aqqad's egoistic feeling drives him to see himself reflected
in aspects of nature. In 'The Curlew' (p. 57) he finds in the lovely song of the
curlew in the dark night an analogy to the cry of the man of genius unheeded
by his ignorant society, a voice lost in the wilderness. 'Aqqad's sense of his
own importance as a poet in a society unable to appreciate him or do him
justice is a recurrent theme of his poetry and is in fact a further stage towards
the feeling of the poet as a prophet not honoured by his own people which we
shall encounter later in the work of the romantics proper. The Poets' Lot'
(p. 85) portrays poets as madmen and dreamers lost in the world of fancy and
inhabiting the clouds. Having given up worldly pursuits for the sake of their
dreams they live in penury, weaving of their sufferings their sad poems.
Lovers of beauty, to whom the hidden secrets of the universe are revealed,
they are not appreciated or rewarded by society. In The Youth of Egypt'
(p. 156) he complains that his contemporaries have been spoilt by life in cities.
He feels that although physically they are dose to him they are in fact as dis-
tant from him 'as a sheep is from a lion'. That is why the poet turns to nature.
The sea in 'Life and the Sea' (p. 223) is where the poet cleanses his soul from
all the stains and hypocrisies of civilized life. The same sentiment is expressed
in 'On the Sea Shore' (p. 224) which begins with the words: 'On the shore of
the sea is a retreat for us from the world of sin and the mansion of ruin.' The
poet's salvation sometimes takes the form of an intimation of the existence of
another world, a divine world of the spirit. For example, this happens in the
poem 'On the Nile' (p. 226) which describes a moonlit night on the Nile.
As in Mazini, the dark night and the raging sea seem to be fit background
for the poet's suffering and his song, as we find in "Night and the Sea' (p. 36).