Weep yourselves into my spirit,
That my spirit may run over
With those tears so sweet and starry.[[756]]
Freya, an acknowledged solar figure, whose car is drawn by cats, weeps golden tears for her lost husband.[[757]] Here the tears of the Sun’s eye are his golden rays.
The Sun being a Well, the light of his rays is the moisture that flows from the well. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead the Sun is called râ pu num âtef nuteru ‘the Sun, the primitive water, the father of the gods.’[[758]] Lucretius (De Rerum Natura, V. 282) calls the Sun
Largus item liquidi fons luminis, aetherius, Sol,
Inrigat assidue coelum candore recenti,
‘who fructifies the heaven with ever-new brilliancy.’ The same view prevails also on Semitic ground. In Hebrew and Arabic the root nâhar denotes equally ‘to flow’ and ‘to shine.’ Nâhâr (Heb.), nahar (Ar.), is ‘a river,’ nahâr (Ar.) ‘the brightness of the sun by day.’ In ʿAbd-al-Raḥmân al-Asadî’s poem in defence of the tribe of Asad against a satire of Ibn Mayyâdâ of the tribe of Murr, the setting of the Sun is called inṣibâbuhâ[[759]] ‘his pouring himself out,’ his condition when he has poured forth all his rays:
If the Sun’s rays belonged to one tribe, * then his shining-forth and his concealment would belong to us;
But he belongs to God, who holds command over him; * to His power belong both his rising and his effusion of himself.