Our country is beautiful: in its sky there is splendor, in its valleys reverence, in its mountains lofti-ness, in its cedars immortality...

The sons of my nation are alive; the sons of my nation are the heart of existence, thirsting for light, for beauty, and for the riches that pulse with genius, with pain, and with poetry.

This is my country, and these are its sons. Is it any wonder, then, that among us should beat an inspired poet who dips his pen in his heart and gives voice to the beauty and splendor, the feeling and sweetness that are in it, and to the goodness and truth that are in them?

Is it any wonder that the poet should give voice to what is around him — the poet, nature's son and her companion, a piece of her songs and a melody of her music?

Is it any wonder that the heart should pulse with what is within it and around it — the heart, a string upon which the fingers of life play, sounding its melodies and its songs, the sweet and beautiful with the bitter and ugly?

No wonder, then, that there should arise in our nation a poet like Mr. Wadih Deeb, painting the beauty of my country with the brush of poetry, and singing to it anthems and hymns that rise from a heart praying at the temple of beauty.

"A Heart That Sings" is the small divan in which the poet pene-trated to the heart of truth and the depths of reality, wresting from them beauty and splendor and filling with them the pages of his book.

In "A Heart That Sings" are songs that took their melodies from the core of quiet, still nature, and from the depths of merry,

smiling souls that hail the face of life and embrace its breath.

Hear him say in his first poem:

In the world of wishing and of love, I am a heart that sings; I care not whether I have won of my day or my day has won of me.

And in the poem "My Homeland," in which the poet hymned the sanctity of his country, he says:

My homeland, your world is dream and desire, and white visions surging with radiance, and a bliss sweet in the planting and in the harvest.

But this soul, thirsty for beauty and song, for chanting and joy, does not lack moments in which it gives free rein to its pains and its cares, to find solace in the word and comfort in the singing.

And how beautiful the poet is when he speaks of his tears; you see them like white pearls on the cheek of art and poetry, defying nature with their splendor and the universe with their beauty. No wonder that Émile Dermenghem, the great Orientalist, took an interest in the poem "The Inspiration of Tears"

and translated it into French. Hear him say:

So they kissed the roses till their buds smiled open to the warmth and burst upon a world of their haunts of song, and the universe regained its luster in his eyes, as though tears were one of its meanings.

Thus Mr. Wadih Deeb does not confine his poetry within a single circle of life, but passes with his guitar from love poetry to patri-otic poems to elegy to aphorisms, etc. ... and all are distinguished by their pleasing music, their sweet delicacy, their marvelous imagery, and their lofty imagination.

Go forward on your way, O poet, for we need beauty as we need matter...

Sing, O poet, the songs of your heart in a world that has shattered its genius at the feet of matter.

Sing — for your singing spreads warmth in our souls, and brings back echoes into our hearts and dreams into our imaginations...!

The American University of Beirut — Halim Barakat