Here the third syllable of the second foot in each line is shortened by license, and the final Kasrah of the first line, standing in pause, is long, the metre being the full form of the Mutakárib as exhibited p. [286], iii. E. i. If we suppress the Kasrah of al-Janáni, which is also allowable in pause, and make the second line to rhyme with the first, saying, for instance:
⏑ ‑ ‑ | ⏑ ‑ ⏑ | ⏑ ‑ ‑ | ⏑ ‑
Aná ’l-Jamrakánu kawiyyu ’l-janán
⏑ ‑ ‑ | ⏑ ‑ ‑ | ⏑ ‑ ‑ | ⏑ ‑
La-yakshà kitálí shijá’u ’l-zamán,
we obtain the powerful and melodious metre in which the Sháhnámah sings of Rustam’s lofty deeds, of the tender love of Rúdabah and the tragic downfall of Siyawush.
Shall I confess that in writing the foregoing pages it has been my ambition to become a conqueror, in a modest way, myself: to conquer, I mean, the prejudice frequently entertained, and shared even by my accomplished countryman, Rückert, that Arabic Prosody is a clumsy and repulsive doctrine. I have tried to show that it springs naturally from the character of the language, and, intimately connected, as it is, with the grammatical system of the Arabs, it appears to me quite worthy of the acumen of a people, to whom, amongst other things, we owe the invention of Algebra, the stepping-stone of our whole modern system of Mathematics. I cannot refrain, therefore, from concluding with a little anecdote anent al-Khalíl, which Ibn Khallikán tells in the following words. His son went one day into the room where his father was, and on finding him scanning a piece of poetry by the rules of prosody, he ran out and told the people that his father had lost his wits. They went in immediately and related to al-Khalíl what they had heard, on which he addressed his son in these terms:
“Had you known what I was saying, you would have excused me, and had you known what you said, I should have blamed you. But you did not understand me, so you blamed me, and I knew that you were ignorant, so I pardoned you.”
L’Envoi.
Here end, to my sorrow, the labours of a quarter-century and here I must perforce say with the “poets’ Poet,”