SHAUQI 37contemplating a moonlit sky.^37 Or, to take another example, his simple and
charming poem Ukht Amina (Amina's sister) (n,126), which describes how
the sight of a little Greek girl, whom he encounters on the boat on his way
back home and who resembles his daughter, fills the poet with longing
for his own child. In fact in one of his poems Shauqi says explicitly that
If verse has neither recollection nor passion
Nor wise sentiment it is no more than numbers.
Shauqi's pronouncements on the nature and effect of poetry are very
scarce indeed, and are to be found mainly in the introduction to his first
edition of Shauqiyyat and in an even briefer word in the preface to one of
his poems (On Rome, i,292). Nevertheless, and despite what Taha Husain
once said,^38 it is not difficult to arrive at Shauqi's conception of poetry.
Clearly, as we have just seen, he did not believe that poetry was simply
rhyming metrical speech. Besides passion Catifah) poetry should also have
what he called 'wisdom' (hikmah). Like Barudi, Shauqi believed in the moral
function of poetry. He often poses as a moralist and teacher and that too
at times in a crudely direct way; for instance, he calls his countrymen and
the whole of the Muslim world to study their past glory and leam how to
compete in the modern world, how to acquire science, technology and
military strength to meet the challenge of the West.^39 In a poem addressed
to the workers (i,95) he urges them to work hard and emulate the example
of ancient Egyptian craftsmen, to possess civic virtues and generally lead
a virtuous life. Shauqi's didacticism is in fact a very pronounced element
in his work: in a poem on the Bee Kingdom (i, 171) he looks for the relevant
moral lesson which we can learn from nature. On the moral effect of poetry
he writes:
God has ordained that truth and wisdom should
Coil around the sceptre of Poesy.
No nation has been roused to what is right
Except when guided by Poesy.
No brass band can so affect the hearts
Of the brave and the cowardly alike. (n,241)
At other times he feels that the moral effect of poetry and of art in general
is less crude, and in a poem written on the occasion of the opening of an
Oriental Music Club (iv,50) he clearly conceives of art as a source of consola-
tion for the soul. Nature herself, he says, resorts to some kind of art when in
the midst of the desert she creates an oasis 'to which the soul turns, seeking
refuge from the searching heat of the desert, finding therein shade or water'.