THE EMIGRANT POBTS 198form. He has written poems on political, social or religious occasions. For
instance, 'To God's Prophet' was occasioned by the birthday of the Prophet,
while a poem like 'To the Refugees' is obviously a political poem. His poetry
is not totally free from traditional features, such as his occasional typical
classical Arabic imagery. For instance in an interesting poem called 'A Life
Fraught with Difficulties'^5 * he gives a vivid account of the difficulties he
encountered in order to earn his living, his arduous journeys in the wilds
with a horsecart laden with the goods he tried to sell, the deserted hovels
he had to sleep in on the way, the dirty water which he had to share with
the horses, the dreaded highwaymen he had to arm himself against. But he
concludes his poem by writing about himself in the manner of a classical
poet writing a fakhr, and praises his pride in turning his back upon easy
living, as if he were a latter-day al-Shanfara; the poem is strewn with the
type of moral precepts and wise saws characteristic in a classical poem, with
the result that some Arab critics likened him to al-Mutanabbi.^57
However, couched in rather traditional verbal forms one often finds in
Farhat's poetry certain romantic themes and attitudes which one associates
with Mahjar poetry, like, for instance, the poet's feeling of isolation, his attack
on the materialism of the age in which he lives, in poems such as 'To The
Evening Star' or 'The Golden Calf', his nostalgia and homesickness for the
Lebanon and his interest in nature. In his autobiographical poem 'Springs of
Poetry' the poet replies to those who wonder how he could write poetry if
he had not received much schooling, by saying that from childhood he has
been looking into the book of nature, birds, trees, the breeze and the running
brooks, the stars, and so forth from which he learned his lessons. In 'To
The Evening Star' he tries to escape from the materialism of contemporary
society to the world of nature. But in his poems about nature, homesickness
and nostalgia, Farhat's emotional attitude is much simpler than that of
al-Rabita poets. In his work one finds a straightforward feeling of homesick-
ness. For example in 'To the Feast' the poet is unhappy at not hearing from
his mother at Christmas. In his nostalgia there is no admixture of philosophy
or mysticism, as for instance, in his poems Homeland' and 'Image of the
Homeland'.^58 The Lebanon remains a geographical location; it does not
become a symbol or a state of consciousness: it never becomes the embodi-
ment of a consistent attitude to life based upon the desire to return to nature.
His volume The Shepherd's Dreams, most of which was written between 1933
and 1934, contains strange pastoral poetry in which the poet, posing as a
shepherd, has a series of dreams. In these dreams man invariably appears as
an evil creature who occupies a place lower than that of animals, and the
book ends on a somewhat uncharacteristic note of disillusionment and pes-
simism.^59