Symbolism, so infinitely rich in the nineteenth century, was necessarily meagre in the deserts of Arabia before the advent of Mahomet, and the Arab lover knew of but few things to which he might compare the beauty of her he loved: comely animals and simple objects familiar to dwellers in tents constituted the bulk of his poetical stock of similes. In the neighborhood of the cities he might see other objects suited to the evocation of graceful fancies, as when he compared the loosened tresses of an Arab girl falling over her face, to 1 the graceful drooping of the flexible vine over its trellis-work,' But he generally confined his symbolism to desert-subjects,--the palm, the ostrich, the gazelle, the wild cattle of the stony hills, the antelopes,--the weapons of his people; for in all countries the eyebrow of the fair has ever been Love's bow, her gaze its arrows, her glance their barbed points that may not be readily withdrawn from the heart. Strange some of these Arab comparisons of beauty seem, yet they are never uncouth, never commonplace or feeble. 'Graceful her waist as a nabak-branch; elegant her stature as a palm,' says one who had never heard the words of Solomon. Another compares the beauties of Nahous to ostriches, with good effect: 'The girls of the neighborhood of Nahous have made thee sick for love by reason of their cadenced walk; measured their steps are like those of the ostrich.' All the Arabian poets have alternately compared the eyes of their women to those of the wild antelope, the gazelle, or the desert cow--sharing the last mentioned simile with Homer. Nor was the nomad troubadour ashamed to compare the graces of his beloved to those of a fine steed. 'My beauty,' cries El-Acha, 'slenderly graceful as a young mare, lithe of flank! ... the curves of her bosom are as the curves of heaven aglow with light.... Woman enchantress! were she but to lean a moment on the body of a dead man, surely he would arise again!' Another sings of captive maidens beautiful as wild desert cows.' Nabiga, one of the greatest of the early poets, is fond of a similar comparison, but uses also the gazelle as a more graceful symbol: 'She hath gazed upon thee with the gaze of a young gazelle, tame, swarthy of hue, sable-eyed and decked with a necklace of strung pearls.'