المعلقات السبع (The Seven Suspended Odes — Arabic text with English)

merely a real expression of their real feelings and a true reflection of their mental workings. False fame, vainglory, flattery, and empty praise were motives not known to those early Arabs, who led a simple and innocent life in the lap of nature, invested with all its concomitant virtues,—bravery, courage, gallantry, truthfulness, innocent and sincere love, fidelity, generosity, liberality, charity, hospitality, and a hatred of cruelty and oppression. With the Arabs of those times poetry was a gift of nature, commonly bestowed on all alike, whether old or young, man or woman, rich or poor, high or low, noble or mean, townsman or peasant, who used it as a tangible expression of their emotions, a ready vehicle of what they thought and felt and a lasting record of their views, made more impressive and more perspicuous by illustrative similes, apt images, and suitable metaphors, such as were readily supplied by natural objects and views of daily sight.

Thus we see the common topics of their poetry to be domestic life, wars, heroic deeds, martial triumphs, travels, camels, horses, weapons, chase, love, reminiscences of old associations, hospitality, glory and genealogy of the tribe, panegyrics of noble personages and chiefs, records of their patriotic and virtuous deeds done for the good of their tribes, acknowledgment of their obligations, elegies, embodying posthumous recollections and commemorations of the virtues of deserving merits in proportion to their deserts. Precepts of sociology, political views, philosophical doctrines, maxims and proverbs were not lacking; but they were mere results of a direct observation of the objects of nature and of a deep contemplation of humanity in its simplest aspect.

Nor were the Arabs unconscious of the high poetical genius wherewith they were endowed by nature, of the great success of their literature, and of the rising fame and triumph of their literary talents. Poetry soon came to be recognised as a noble