Note 26 — ARABIC LITERATURE (continued 4)

This and the following Assembly are justly reckoned among the masterpieces of the author. To pass suddenly from the most solemn subjects to pleasantry, to place in the mouth of a clever impostor the most serious warnings that can be addressed to mankind, may be morally objectionable; but in the Moslem world, where religion is mixed up with all the concerns of life, and pious discourse and phrases abound, it excites little repugnance. The design of the author in the present composition was to produce an elaborate sermon in rhymed prose and in verse, and his genius takes a higher flight than usual. The incident on which the Assembly is founded is simple. Harith, in a fit of religious zeal, betakes himself to the public burial-ground of the city of Saweh, for the purpose of contemplation. He finds a funeral in progress, and when it is over, an old man, with his face muffled in a cloak, takes his stand on a hillock, and pours forth a discourse on the certainty of death and judgment; rebuking his hearers for their worldly selfishness, and warning them that wealth and power are of little avail against the general leveler. He then rises into poetry and declaims a piece which is one of the noblest productions of Arabic literature. In lofty morality, in religious fervor, in beauty of language, in power and grace of meter, this magnificent hymn is unsurpassed.