NEOCLASSICISM 22Never again shall my heart rest from sorrow, now that you have gone,
Never again shall my bed be soft.
When I awake you are the first thought in my mind, and when
I retire to sleep you are my last nourishment.
His elegy on his friend 'Abdullah Fikri, to mention another example (a short
poem of nine lines), is no less sincere, although the feeling expressed in it is
of a different nature: the poet's affection for his friend and his reverence for
his memory reveal themselves in the dominant image of light which is
sustained throughout the whole poem.^16
Barudi's originality is shown in his readiness to write about new themes,
which do not form part of the traditional subjects or 'kinds' of poetry, to
record a personal memory or a mood as in the following charming poem
A strange little sound I heard. It released my eyes from a
slumber, which was a trap for a vision that visited me at dawn.
I asked my eyes to explore what my ears had heard. My eyes
replied, 'Perchance we shall see.'
Searching, they found a bird perched on a bough, furtively
looking around and cautiously listening,
Ready to take wing above the bush, fluttering like a heart on
remembering a dear one who has been absent so long.
Ever restless on its legs, no sooner did it settle than it
would turn away again,
Now and then the branch swaying with it, throwing it up in
the air, like a stick hitting a ball on the field,
What ails it that, safe and sound as it is, it should always
be looking with caution and fear?
It it should go up it would be amidst the soft green, and should it
fall down it would drink of the brooks or pick up food with its beak.
O Bird, you have driven away the vision of my beloved which
granted me joy when it visited me at night,
Wliite of complexion she is, with the eyes of a gazelle and
fair as the moon when it shines bright.
Now that her image has departed from me, I am stricken with
longing, grief and sleeplessness.
Would that slumber return to me that I might in her absence
satisfy my longing with her image! (i, 166—8).
This is, of course, both a love poem and a nature poem. As a love poem it is
based on a novel and original situation, and as a nature poem it reveals a
new attitude of sympathy towards the bird which makes the poet observe
lovingly and record the details of its little furtive movements. We can see here
the germ of what will later become the dominant sympathetic attitude to
nature in the work of some of the 'romantic' Arab poets.