TAHA 139poem as well as that of his collection, since one of the dominant images in
Lamartine's poem is that of man journeying on the ocean of time with no
harbour in sight, and being carried for ever into eternal night. In "The Deserted
Shore' the poet appears as a wandering wretch weeping by a lonely shore.^67
Except for a handful of poems, mainly elegies on poets and statesmen, the
poems in The Lost Mariner aie all intensely subjective. The themes that attracted
Taha are mainly poetry and the poet, human suffering, love and nature. Of
these the most important is the first on which the others are often directly
or indirectly brought to bear. The two longest poems in the collection are 'A
Poet's Birth' and 'God and the Poet'. The former, with which the volume
opens and which was first published in the Apollo magazine, shows us the
remarkable change that had occurred in the meantime in the conception of
the poet, or in the Arab poet's self-image. This is how Taha describes the
birth of a poet (p. 11).
He descended on earth like a ray of celestial light.
Bearing the wand of a magician and the heart of a prophet.
A spark of the iridescent spirit has dwelt in the folds of a human frame,
Inspiring his heart and tongue with every elevated thought from the
world of wisdom and light.The romanticizing is now complete, and instead of being a skilful craftsman,
as he was generally thought of in classical Arabic poetry and criticism, the
poet is now regarded as a winged and ethereal being, a thing of the spirit, a
magician, a 'mighty philosopher', a 'seer' and a prophet all in one. The con-
ception of the poet as a creature of light, hinted at by Abu Shadi, has by now
become an assumption fully accepted and explicitly stated. In his description
of his poet's birth Taha uses the language in which only the birth of the
Prophet has hitherto been traditonally celebrated in Muslim religious or
mystic verse. Interestingly enough, the conclusion of this poem has un-
mistakable echoes from de Musset's Nuit de Mai. But clearly in the manner in
which he has expressed his conception of the poet as a prophet and a vision-
ary, Taha has drawn as much on sources from western Romantic poetry as on
the traditional idiom of Sufi writing.^68
In 'The Poet's Room' (p. 38) we see the lonely figure of the suffering poet
sitting up until the small hours of the morning in his silent room, unable to
sleep from excess of care in an unjust world which is not a fit'place for an in-
nocent, sensitive and gifted spirit. Likewise, 'The Fugitive' (p. 191) presents
the poet as a symbol of freedom of thought and of the spirit and an apostle of
the Truth who is misunderstood and unappreciated by his society. Yet,
despite his view of himself as a nobler, more spiritual being, the poet's feeling