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

triumphing over the evergreen laurels, so nobly won by the superior elegance, eloquence and purity of their language, their admirable images and their vivid descriptions. They were universally admired by the public, who in order to testify their appreciation of their real beauties and the recognition of the obligation, which the Arabic language in no little measure owed to them, unanimously agreed to immortalize their fame by conferring on them the highest honour they could bestow—that of hanging them inside the Ka'ba the sacred building at the center of the Great Mosque in Mecca, the most sacred shrine of their worship, as a memorial to posterity, after they were inscribed in letters of gold on pieces of a fine white cloth of Egypt, whence they are also called ‘the Golden,’ al-Mudhahhabât the gilded ones.

AN OUTLINE OF THE CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF THE POEMS, WITH AN EXPOSITION OF THE POINTS OF SIMILARITY AND DIFFERENCE.

The poems all agree in one important respect. They are all introduced with touching reminiscences of old associations, old times, the early days of the poets, and the happy days they spent of old in the pleasant society of the objects of their love. The fifth poem, however, differs a little, and is introduced by the poet asking his lady-love to give him a cup of good wine, and by his giving a pithy and elegant description of her beauties. The second poem slightly touches on the latter subject, while the sixth poem enters into many more details.

All the poems, except the third and the fifth, contain a description of riding beasts,—that of the first being a high bred horse and those of the rest fast-riding and noble she-camels. In the second poem we find a graphic and detailed description of the bodily structure of a noble she-camel and in the rest a vivid picture of her way of travelling.

The first, the second and the sixth poems are egotistic: the first deeply coloured with a kingly spirit and royal virtues; the