Antar And Zara; Or, “The Only True Lovers.” I.
An Eastern Romance Narrated In Songs.
By Aubrey De Vere.
Preface.
Who has not heard of those Christian communities which have held their own during so many centuries, on the citied slopes of the Lebanon, or on the adjacent plains? Several of them have existed from a period earlier than that in which the foundations of our oldest monarchies were laid. The Maronites derive their name from Maron, a hermit of the IVth century, whose cell, on the banks of the Orontes, gradually attracted a Christian population about it. In the VIIth and VIIIth centuries, when the sword of the False Prophet was carrying all before it, they retreated from the uplands of the Euphrates and Mesopotamia to the fastnesses of the Lebanon. The Melchites, a race of unquestionably Arab origin, and whose religious offices are still celebrated in Arabic, emigrated to Syria before the Christian era, and became Christian in the IVth century. Weakened by their hereditary feuds, they retain, notwithstanding, all the pride of their ancient stock, and not less all its heroism, its generosity, its hospitality, its sense of honor, and its passion for poetry and eloquence. The devotion of both these races to their Faith is sufficiently attested by their having retained it during so many centuries of wrong, and in spite of so many persecutions. In the massacres of 1860 alone about 12,000 of them perished.
Few subjects are more worthy of attention than the ways of a People which still keeps so much of what belonged to the feudal and monastic system of Europe in the Middle Ages, and combines them with the patriarchal traditions of the world's morning. Much that we possess they lack; but, among them, some of the affections—Patriotism and Love, for instance—retain a meaning which appears to grow daily more rare amid the boasted civilization of the West. That meaning is illustrated alike in their lives and their poetry. It has been observed that the religious poetry of the East sometimes resembles love-poetry. The converse remark may no less be made. Eastern love-poetry is wide in its range; but its more characteristic specimens resemble the early poetry of religion or patriotic devotion, so full are they of elevation and self-sacrifice. I know not how far the spirit of such poetry can make itself intelligible to the sympathies of the West. To many readers the present poem will be an experiment new, not only as regards its spirit, but its form also—that of a story narrated in songs. It was composed, in substance, some years ago, when the author was in the East.
Part I.
He Sang.[81]
I.
O wind of night! what doth she at this hour