native villagers,--the life of such a one could not be told
within the space at our command; it will, with other of his
poems, form the subject of a separate volume. What appears
advisable is that we should devote this introduction to a
commentary on the poems here translated; which we call a "diwan,"
by the way, because they are selected out of all his works. A
commentary on the writings of a modern poet is supposed to be
superfluous, but in the days of Abu'l-Ala of Ma'arri you were
held to pay the highest compliment if, and you were yourself a
poet, you composed a commentary on some other poet's work.
Likewise you were held to be a thoughtful person if you gave the
world a commentary on your own productions; and Abu'l-Ala did not
neglect to write upon his _Sikt al-Zand_ ("The Falling Spark of
Tinder") and his _Lozum ma la Yalzam_ ("The Necessity of what is
Unnecessary"), out of which our diwan has been chiefly made. But
his elucidations have been lost. And we--this nobody will
contradict--have lost the old facility. For instance, Hasan ibn
Malik ibn Abi Obaidah was one day attending on Mansur the
Chamberlain, and he displayed a collection of proverbs which Ibn
Sirri had made for the Caliph's delectation. "It is very fine,"
quoth Mansur, "but it wants a commentary." And Hasan in a week
returned with a commentary, very well written, of three hundred
couplets. One other observation: we shall not be able to present
upon these pages a connected narrative, a dark companion of the
poem, which is to the poem as a shadow to the bird. A mediæval
Arab would have no desire to see this theory of connection put in
practice--no, not even with a poem; for the lines, to win his
admiration, would be as a company of stars much more than as a
flying bird. Suppose that he produced a poem of a hundred lines,
he would perchance make fifty leaps across the universe. But if