"Shame hitherto was wont my tears to stay, But now by shame they will no more be stayed, So that each bone seems through its skin to sob, And every vein to swell the sad cascade. She uncovered: pallor veiled her at farewell: No veil 'twas, yet her cheeks it cast in shade. So seemed they, while tears trickled over them, Gold with a double row of pearls inlaid. She loosed three sable tresses of her hair, And thus of night four nights at once she made; But when she lifted to the moon in heaven Her face, two moons together I surveyed."[575] The critic then enumerates various beautiful and original features of Mutanabbí's style, _e.g._-- 1. His consecutive arrangement of similes in brief symmetrical clauses, thus:-- "She shone forth like a moon, and swayed like a moringa-bough, And shed fragrance like ambergris, and gazed like a gazelle." 2. The novelty of his comparisons and images, as when he indicates the rapidity with which he returned to his patron and the shortness of his absence in these lines:-- "I was merely an arrow in the air, Which falls back, finding no refuge there." 3. The _laus duplex_ or 'two-sided panegyric' (_al-madḥ, al-muwajjah_), which may be compared to a garment having two surfaces of different colours but of equal beauty, as in the following verse addressed to Sayfu ’l-Dawla:-- "Were all the lives thou hast ta'en possessed by thee, Immortal thou and blest the world would be!" Here Sayfu ’l-Dawla is doubly eulogised by the mention of his triumphs over his enemies as well as of the joy which all his friends felt in the continuance of his life and fortune. 4. His manner of extolling his royal patron as though he were speaking to a friend and comrade, whereby he raises himself from the position of an ordinary encomiast to the same level with kings. 5. His division of ideas into parallel sentences:-- "We were in gladness, the Greeks in fear, The land in bustle, the sea in confusion."