Arabian Poetry: Extracts From The Lay of the Himyarites: Notes on the Poem of Tarafa

vv. 8, 9. Lane, n his "Modern Egyptians," describing the composition of the black powder, called kohl, with which ladies of Cairo paint the edge of their eyelids, both above and below the eye, mentions the powder of various kinds of lead-ore (kohl el-hagar) as being employed for this purpose. He also states that "some women, to make their teeth glisten, tattoo their lips." It would appear from these verses that the Arab women in like manner employed a preparation of lead-ore in order to render their teeth more sparkling by contrast with their "dark-coloured bases."

v. 41. This verse resembles a couplet in the song of Beshâmeh son of Hazn of Nahshal, thus rendered by Mr Lyall in his "Songs from the Hamâseh and Aghânî:"

’Tis mine, whene’er the tribes to glory call,
In deeds of daring to outstrip them all.
High waves the lash above my camel's head;
Though sultry vapours o’er the mountains spread,
Onward she rushes, and her flowing tail
Floats, like the dancer's garment, on the gale.
Me you will find, or at the council board,
Or where the taverns maddening draughts afford:
Come in the morning, and I'll give a bowl
Shall warm the prudence of thy chilly soul.
Come to the council of our tribe, and see
Its brightest honours showered down on me:
But, above all, come join the merry ring
Where gay youths laugh and blooming maidens sing.—RṚ.

vv. 48-51. The singing-girls who sang at the drinking-parties of the ancient Arabs were Greeks, Syrians, or Persians. Until after El-Islâm the Arabs, though masters of rhythm and metre, had no indigenous system of singing except the rude song (originally of the camel-driver) called rajez. These girls probably sang for the most part in their own tongue, and played the music which they had learned in Persian ’Irâk or Syria; but in the life of En-Nâbigha of Dubyân, as given in the Aghânî (ix. 164), a singing girl of Yethrib (afterwards El-Madîna) is mentioned, who sang one of that poet's pieces in Arabic, and so enabled him to detect a fault of prosody.—Lyall: Notes on vv. 60, 61, Lebīd's Mo‘all.

v. 49. In Lane's "Modern Egyptians," Ed. 1860, p. 378, is an illustration of two Ghawázee, or public dancing-girls of Cairo, in which the costume exactly corresponds with Tarafa's description of the singing-girls’ vests.

v. 56. This sentiment of the old Arab poet finds a parallel in the following verse, from the Persian of Omar Khayyam:

What boots it to repeat
How time is slipping underneath our feet?
Unborn To-Morrow, and dead Yesterday—
Why fret about them if To-Day be sweet?

[paragraph continues] "Poets of all ages," remarks Nott, in his "Select Odes of Hafiz," "and particularly those who were voluptuaries, urge the advice of making the best use of the present moment. The carpe diem of Horace is a frequently-quoted maxim."

In a very different strain does a modern English poet endeavour to inculcate the lesson of life:

Know’st thou Yesterday, its aim and reason?
Work’st thou well To-Day for worthy things?
Then calmly wait the Morrow's hidden season,
And fear not thou what hap soe’er it brings.

[paragraph continues] The great American, Longfellow, too, in one of his beautiful prose-poems: "Look not mournfully into the Past: it comes not back

again. Wisely improve the Present: it is thine. Go boldly forth into the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart."

v. 58. The Arabs, like the Greeks and the Romans, commonly drank their wine diluted with water; and only on extraordinary occasions drank the lighter kinds pure, and the more heavy wines mixed with a very little water. (See Mo‘all. of Amru, v. 2. and Note.)

If Death be near me, let me quaff the bowl,
That none to-morrow mourn a thirsty soul.
The same dark mansions, by an equal fate,
The noble spirit and the mean await;
Their mother-Earth impartial seals their doom,
And one broad stone protects their common tomb.
Death, the all-conquering, seizes on the bold,
His proudest prey—then claims the miser's gold.
Though short my life, I've seen the age of man
Dwindling, still dwindling, in its narrow span
The camel-riders, when they loose the rein,
With firmer grasp the slackened cord retain:
So, though he spare them for a little space,
Death holds dominion over all our race.
Let me then quaff the goblets while I live,
Nor die unconscious of the joys they give. —Ret. Rev.

vv. 64, 65. Thus Horace, in his well-known ode (Sir Theodore Martin's translation):

It recks not whether thou
Be opulent and trace
Thy birth from Kings, or bear upon thy brow
Stamp of a beggar's race:
In rags or splendour, Death at thee alike,
That no compassion hath for aught of earth, will strike.

[paragraph continues] And the Persian Sa‘dī: "When the pure and spotless soul is about to depart, of what importance is it whether we expire upon a throne or upon the bare ground?"

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THE POEM OF TARAFA.