every line, so that you seem to see with your own eye what this writer-poet tells you of.

And read "A Grain of Sand," and set what our writer said of the Prophet Muhammad, the greatest Messenger, beside what Goethe, Germany's great poet, wrote — and you will see that death cuts the strings and shows no mercy. It is only "A Grain of Sand," but it is a mountain of poetry.

And in the essay "In the Procession of the Sleepers" we hear a bohemian poet say:

"Here I am in a rioting, fevered, reckless drunkenness — an animal walking with animals, a beast living with beasts, one accursed among the world's accursed. I drag my plucked wing behind me along the paths and through the streets. Here I am, not yet released... When shall I be able, my friend, to slip free of the bonds of woman, and of dust, and of the illusions of flesh and blood, and the measures of time, and become a complete man?"

You were wrong, Fouad: had it come about as you wished, you would have been nothing. For were it not for flesh and blood, and all the temptations and relishes on this table, we should not have had the Fouad Suleiman whose memory we honor tonight.

And in a passing word I say: The Moon's Path is a genuine Lebanese anthem, for which God has decreed immortality. Its poet shines brightest when he aims his pen at the springs and the vine-yards and everything connected with the village.

As for what this writer wrote over the signature "Tammuz," I leafed through it from beginning to end until I came to blank pages which death did not give Tammuz time to blacken — and thereby to whiten the face of letters. I do not know why a shiver ran over me when my eye fell on those little white pages. I felt a tear dance among my lashes — though in times of trial my tears come dear.

Yes, nothing remains to us of Fouad Suleiman but these

clippings from that newspaper and that magazine; but they are clippings containing a spirit that once coursed in Fouad's flesh and blood, and they have left posterity this living heritage.

In the Tammuziyyat, Fouad rises up against every crookedness that fell beneath his eye. He rises up for tormented humanity, as in the piece entitled "A Worm-Eaten Man." And in everything he wrote, in truth, he never gave up his eloquence nor stripped himself of his imagination... He addresses people from on high, however high they stand; he pelts them with words like bombshells; he scorns them and does not care. And sometimes a bitter irony comes to him unbidden and shows beautiful, as when he says:

"We have begun to fear for the Lebanese house, lest it collapse — woman is busy with her cause. Give her her right and rid us of the matter; try her: she may mend what we ourselves have spoiled."

And how telling a word — rather,

how truthful its speaker — when he spoke of the robbery of the poet Michel Trad, author of Gulnar. He said: "We did not know that the venerable poet Michel Trad possessed anything precious worth stealing — except this venerable poetry, from which no poet in Lebanon has failed to steal a word, a fragrance, and a color."

But that is a word with more behind it, honored listener; I men-tioned it to you on purpose, and our appointment with the details is near.

And finally, this is the picture of the poet and writer from whose eyes fire would blaze, whose nerves electricity kindled. This is the picture of him we used to call Fouad Suleiman in the days when he was among us; today I find no title for him, for names and titles are all worn cheap — so let the daughters of Lebanese poetry renew the feast of wailing for "Tammuz!"