A Greeting to the Morning

"By the woman of letters May"
On the tenth anniversary of her death

Hail, O morning, when you burst forth from the heart of the dusk, having harvested for your light the beams of all the shining stars, and gathered for your sweet fragrance the breaths of all the flowers!

Hail, O morning, when your heart traces along the whole ridge of the Muqattam chain a line of glow and flame, fine and winding in wondrous harmony, as though it were dividing the formed and palpable world from the world that lies still within the realm of imagining and coloring.

Hail, O morning, when your sun comes swaying forward in her radiant procession, clearing from the face of the universe the mystery of darkness, and lifting the veil from the countenance of Cairo, wrapped in the trance of dreams; dispelling the obscurity from the figures of the minarets and the bell-domes among the dwellings, the edifices, and the palaces, which proclaim their reverence as they point toward the heights, as though they had passed their night in supplication and entreaty for the good of the children of men!

Sweet are you in autumn, O morning, when you appear soft, languid, brimming with tenderness, as though you felt the importance of the seeds cast into the earth, grappling there with the hidden powers in fierce struggle, to draw up the nourishment and matter needful for their growth, and to become a force complete and independent in itself!

And touching are you in winter, when you appear perplexed and uneasy in your wrenching free from the dominion of night to create the dominion of day, weighed down with heavy sorrows at being compelled to wake those who have surrendered themselves to rest and heedlessness and forgetting, and to force them to endure life, to carry its burdens, and to manage its affairs!

And beautiful are you in spring, when you wake serene and bright, laden with joyous songs among the trees, drunk on the wine of the rain coursing in the boughs, enchanted by the madness of delight spreading through every atom of the atoms of existence!

And brilliant are you in summer, when you rise arrayed in the trappings of mastery and triumph. You invade the horizons with the blazing splendor of the sun, and pour the light forth, advancing upon beings and upon creatures, and you speak in your settled tongue, saying to whoever understands: "I have given you much, and I shall give you much forever — so up, to the harvest!"

How like you are to man at the moment of his coming forth from the kingdom of sleep!

The wings of the clouds are in your procession, ranged in dyes of gold and silver, of ruby and emerald, streaming along the gray horizon, as though they were the phantoms of his dreams and his imaginings, tinted with the colors of waking and of hope!

And your wrenching free from the noose of the gentle, gentle fog closed upon you — it is as though it were his release from the bliss of surrender, the sweetness of rest, and the quivering tenderness that swaddles him in his solitude and his slumber!

And the shining of the sun in you, and her climbing by degrees through the tiers of space — it is as though it were the gathering of his will little by little, and the clearing of his thoughts, as wakefulness gains ground and the day advances and works and endeavors fall into order!

Make me, O morning, worthy of all this splendor which you pour around me in dazzling beauty! Make me worthy of the joy of waking which you spread within me!

You are great and strong, O morning, and I am small and troubled — so be gentle with me.
I love you, O morning — then love me!

An article not previously published — from "al-Alam al-Arabi"