... A long time has passed with her composing verse, and it occurred to her at last to favor her preferred magazine — The Woman's Voice — with a charming collection, which we shall publish in succession. The poetess is Lebanese by origin, and we shall present her — in deference to her wish — under a pen name, until such time as she herself changes her mind...

In the poetry of "Umm Khaldun" there is a touch of authentic native taste, and a practiced hand in the art of wedding words — and who knows what bright future awaits

her in the years to come?!!

— The Editors —

Ah, would that my soul could loose its bonds

And be folded with the clouds into their surge

And go whence there is no returning

When the light gathers up its skirts

Be shrouded in its wondrous robe

Be freed of all its weariness

And go away in the departing twilight

And plunge into its blazing train

To the earth in its clamorous living

Be caught up in its pale skirt

And be buried in its setting breast

And drowse upon its melting heart

I imagined myself above the clouds

Coming and going, mooring and floating

Cast upon the cotton of a cloud

The sun's blood a dew that flowed gushing forth

Dissolved in the clouds from white

Seeping in from one side, bearing down

Working deep among the folds of the cloud-banks

And over the oceans in a boat

And I fling myself like one at play

Embroidered like a downy silken mantle

And mingled into the curdled foam

Turned blue, or browned all over

Sprinkling its blood from one side

Like one who screens his eyes with the brow

It is the sun that journeys on, though she

It is magic, what the beholders' eyes look upon

She hid herself and vanished, traveling on to rise

Hers are the two easts, hers the two wests

I wished I might cast myself upon her breast

And spin along her thread in space

And be carried on the wing of the air

To its flood-tide in the folds of the gulf

There is a place where the soul comes to rest

Until it sees her among those ascending

And is she anywhere but in one of the stars

There — there life grows sweet

Life stretches long — and what is in it

O joy for my soul, if it is set free

Is nailed fast in her ashen disk

For she has been dyed with a lying blood

On the other, reproachful side

Hers the rope flung loose upon the withers

And melt into her sinking glow

And be cast upon the drifting flood

To the sea in its angry waves

To its ebb-tide, beating and fleeing

In her contented, willing sleep

To the piercing star of paradise

Set down and away from our wayward star!!