The Woman's Voice

... Hatred is small and hideous;

love alone is great, and love alone is beautiful...

... Hatred is a darkness that closes the soul upon darkness, and with it the soul closes upon darknesses... Love alone is light; in love the soul lives in a light that the worm-eaten conscience of hatred never knows...

Hatred is weakness... love alone is strength...

Hatred has fought on every front, and it has always been routed.

Hatred has never conquered anyone... love conquers it always. And whoever works by hatred, the black vipers devour his heart!

And whoever works by love, his heart is lit with peace of mind, with goodness, and with truth...

And the youth of Lebanon, who enter with history into a battle for the sake of the good — this youth will not darken its conscience with hatred; the black vipers will not devour its heart; nor will it write its letters with the hiss of poisoned hatred in them.

For the word is blessed, and the letter is light and freedom...

The youth of Lebanon, the comrades of Ghassan Tueni, will not do wrong to themselves and to their nation... for hatred is a wrong...

By love they will conquer and prevail.

Love alone is great and strong.

Here are enchanting duets plucked from the "Tammuziyyat" of the departed man of letters, Fouad Suleiman; his fragrant pen was alone master of their cadence — it clothed the letters in colors and invention, and breathed into literature a new and deathless perfume. "Tammuz" was fine of feeling, marvelous in endurance, rich of imagination. God rest "Tammuz," who has not died.

— Let down your long lashes... so... let them down, O Ashtarut!

For in all the fields of Lebanon there is no ear of wheat as sweet as these lashes!

Keep them lowered...

How dear they are, so, to the heart of "Tammuz"...

... Oh, your divine body, in which all the colors of Lebanon drown!!

Tender as spring... gleaming like summer... appetizing as the pine cones of my country...

White, white as the doves in our grotto...

Red, red as the jujube fruit in the mountain country.

Oh, this body!! As if it were of the purple silk of Phoenicia!

A couch for kings, and a bed for gods, and a pillow for the head of "Jupiter."

Sweet... sweet is this body, as if it were an apple out of Paradise.

Beautiful, as if it were of the colors of sunrise.

The lilies of the field long for it in a drowse of languor, and the red roses twine about it, naked, naked...

Surrender, O Ashtarut... and you will never surrender to arms more beautiful, purer, or stronger than these two.

Let down your long lashes...

For the moonlight is rising over the mountain...

And in my body there is a wild beast.