This fashion centres in the _Qaṣída_,[151] or Ode, the only form, or rather the only finished type of poetry that existed in what, for want of a better word, may be called the classical period of Arabic literature. The verses (_abyát_, singular _bayt_) of which it is built vary in number, but are seldom less than twenty-five or more than a hundred; and the arrangement of the rhymes is such that, while the two halves of the first verse rhyme together, the same rhyme is repeated once in the second, third, and every following verse to the end of the poem. Blank-verse is alien to the Arabs, who regard rhyme not as a pleasing ornament or a "troublesome bondage," but as a vital organ of poetry. The rhymes are usually feminine, _e.g._, sa_khíná_, tu_líná_, mu_híná_; mukh_lidí_, _yadí_, ‘uw_wadí_; ri_jámuhá_, si_lámuhá_, ḥa_rámuhá_. To surmount the difficulties of the monorhyme demands great technical skill even in a language of which the peculiar formation renders the supply of rhymes extraordinarily abundant. The longest of the _Mu‘allaqát_, the so-called 'Long Poems,' is considerably shorter than Gray's _Elegy_. An Arabian Homer or Chaucer must have condescended to prose. With respect to metre the poet may choose any except _Rajaz_, which is deemed beneath the dignity of the Ode, but his liberty does not extend either to the choice of subjects or to the method of handling them: on the contrary, the course of his ideas is determined by rigid conventions which he durst not overstep. [Sidenote: Ibn Qutayba's account of the contents and divisions of the Ode.]