SHAUQI 39When it is ablaze in the morning or when sunset
envelops it in its flame
And when the rays of the sun go round it on a clear
day or through the folds of clouds
You would think it was Pharaoh's maid,
standing, waiting, in the palace courtyard,
Wearing round her head a diadem of agates intercalated with beads
of gold,
On her bosom necklaces of coral, her sash made of brocade,
And round her body a mantle tightly wrapped. (rv,64)
In the poem 'The Bee Kingdom' (i,171), the bees, like other aspects of non-
human nature, such as trees and birds, are seen as human beings, not in then-
basic elemental nature, their passions and instincts, but as living in a civil-
ized context, wearing clothes, living in luxury and in organized communities.
No wonder then that Shauqi, in whose work descriptive poetry occupies a
large and important part, was fascinated particularly by artefacts and the
interior of buildings. He wrote poems on mosques and churches ( II,27,60), on
the Roman remains hi Syria (n, 123), and on Islamic architecture in Spain
(n,60). One of his favourite subjects was ancient Egyptian antiquities, and he
wrote on the temples at Philae (n,68), Tutankhamon (n,l 16) and the Sphinx
(i,158). In such poems we get more than a mere graphic description: they
often express the poet's attitude to life, to the past and present and to his own
country. A magnificent example of this is to be found in the poem on the
Sphinx (Abul Haul, i,158), which perhaps illustrates the poet's creative imag-
ination at its best. Here the complexity of the poet's attitude is clear: we
notice his irony and his time-weariness, his awareness of the past, of the
transitory nature of life, his sense of the great vista of time against which
he sees every human endeavour. Together with this there is the poet's sense
of evil and of man's sinfulness. Furthermore, despite the poet's moral and
philosophical meditations this is a deeply patriotic poem (as the last seven
lines clearly show). All this is conveyed through a series of impressive images
and ideas: such as the image of sand stretching before the Sphinx and on both
sides like 'the sins of men'(i, 162), or men wondering at the strange form of the
Sphinx as half man, half beast, while if their own outward form were to be a
faithful expression of their true nature they should all have the shapes of
beasts of prey (160), or the image of the Sphinx 'mounting the sand' and jour-
neying endlessly through days and nights (158), or crouching there from time
immemorial and witnessing the birth and death of one world after another
and the endless procession of empires.
Shauqi's interest in history is evident throughout his career. We have seen
how early in life he wrote both historical narrative and historical drama.