Bey imitated him in a qasida that opens: "I am Antonio, and Antonio is I."

After all this — where is true love in poetry? Where is the poet who utters a sincere feeling that none before him has uttered? Where is the poetry at which every heart trembles, be it full of love or empty of it? Where is the poet who dips his pen in the blood of his heart and not in the ink of his inkwell? Where is love in poetry? It is in such lines as Majnun's:

As if my heart, the night it was said that Layla al-'Amiriyya would set out at morning or at evening, were a sandgrouse beguiled by a snare, tugging at it the night through, its wing held fast.

And Ibn Abi Rabi'a said:

He who bears the old longing, though he be con-soled, longs anew whenever he meets with lovers.

And he said:

For love of you I love even one who is no bosom-friend of mine, nor companion; I lavish my wealth to win your good pleasure and reproach whoever comes to you reproaching; and were mankind to take one side of the earth, and she to withdraw to a side apart, I would make for her side, for I find in her nearness the wonder of wonders.

And Suhaym said:

My cloak kept the sweetness of her garments a full year, till the cloak wore through to rags.

And 'Urwa ibn Hizam said:

I have borne for 'Afra what neither I nor the firm-rooted mountains have hands to bear. As if a sandgrouse hung by its wing upon my heart, so hard does it beat.

And when he met her in Syria he said:

I have only to see her all at once and I stand dazed, scarce able to answer; I turn from the judgment I had formed, and forget what I resolved while she was away.

And Ibn al-Mawla, one of the mukhadramin, recited:

I weep — but no Layla has wept from ardor for me, nor does Layla grant her love to the devoted; I bow to make amends whenever I am at fault, and when she offends, it is I who beg the pardon.

And Hujayya ibn al-Mudarrib said:

When she draws near, her nearness heightens your longing; and when she keeps aloof, aloofness brings no forgetting of her.

And Abu al-Shis said:

Passion has a bell that drives off slumber: whenever I am about to doze, it shakes the bell.

And I delight in what al-Farazdaq said after divorcing Nawar:

She was my Paradise, and I went out from it as Adam went, when defiance drove him forth.

And in Abu Nuwas's:

His face grows more beautiful the more you look upon it.

And in al-Sharif al-Radi's:

My eye turned back — and when the dwellings were hidden from me, my heart turned back.

But ever since al-Wa'wa' said:

She let fall pearls from narcissus, and watered roses, and bit upon jujubes with hailstones,

people have been bewitched by artifice, and so they remained throughout the age of decadence.

Mention of the watcher, the chider, the talebearer, coquetry, and all the other attributes of woman multiplied in Abbasid poetry, for the veil sharpened the pain of love, just as it was a cause of the barrier between woman and the ghazal. What she does best in her own poetry is the elegy: if you hear her mourn a husband or a son, the warmth of the feeling, the sincerity of the sentiment, and the beauty of the expression will win you.

As for love in modern poetry — that is another story.

(From a talk on the Near East Radio)