BARUDI 23Nature, in fact, constitutes one of the dominant themes of Barudi's poetry
He devoted whole poems to describing, generally from personal experience,
its various aspects: tempestuous nights, starlit skies, raging seas, mountains
and forests. He wrote many a poem on the pleasures of spring, on autumn,
on clouds, dawn, palm-trees, brooks and birds.^17 There is much local Egyptian
colour in his Diwan: we find the Egyptian countryside, cottonfields, the Nile
with its busy traffic of sailing ships.^18 He often found in nature, in the idyllic
life of the countryside, a refuge from the turbulent and dangerous world of
politics (U57). His descriptive poetry is, of course, by no means confined to
nature and the countryside. He described some of the antiquities of Pharaonic
Egypt like the Pyramids (i,149). In this he may have been inspired by the
patriotic verse of Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, but he certainly set the example for
succeeding neoclassical poets like Shauqi.
Because with Barudi poetry ceased to be a mere artificial display of
linguistic ability, and became of direct relevance to the poet's serious business
of life, it is not surprising to find him dealing, directly or indirectly, with
political themes. His poems contain much political criticism, diverse attacks
on the tyranny of Isma'il and especially Taufiq, earnest calls to the people to
revolt in order to realize a more democratic or representative system of govern-
ment.^19 His anger and alarm at the deteriorating political situation are often
expressed in outspoken terms.^20 In the single panegyric on Taufiq, which
he wrote on the occasion of his accession to the throne, he emphasizes the
need for the people to have a say in their own government, which is rather
an odd thing to say in what is meant to be an eulogy U69). He has no soft
words to say for tyranny:
The most fatal disease is for the eye to see
A tyrant doing wrong,
Vet having his praises sung
At public gatherings. (1,73)He makes a desperate attempt to rouse the nation to take action against
tyranny and persecution U316—17).
Barudi's arrest and exile on account of the role he played in the Urabi
rebellion resulted in much of his best poetry. He expressed in many moving
poems the sufferings he endured, his homesickness, his nostalgia for past
happy times in an idealized Egypt, grief over the death of his relatives and
friends during his absence, although the cumulative effect tends to be peril-
ously close to self-pity. Here is an example, a short poem in which he registers
his feelings when he was in prison: