There is nothing more universal and more generally pervading all nature-poetry than the idea ‘Like one _laughing gaily_ the world shone,’ as the Tatar poet says of the sunrise;[253] and in Arabic poetry, which has to be especially considered on these subjects, it is met with at every step. In the charming Romance of ʿAntar, the cessation of night and the break of day is dozens of times expressed by the words ‘until the black night went off and the _laughing morning_ (al-ṣabâḥ al-ḍaḥik) arose;’ or ‘the morning arose and smiled (ibtasama) out of dazzling teeth.’[254] The old poet al-Aʿsha says of a blooming meadow that it rivals the sun in laughter (yuḍâḥik al-shams);[255] and in the last maḳâmâ of Ḥarîrî (de Sacy, 2nd ed. p. 673. 2,) it is even said that ‘the tooth of the daybreak laughs’ (ibtasama thaġr al-fajr), i.e. becomes visible, as the teeth of a person laughing become visible. This mythic view has become so incorporated in the Arabic language that the word _bazaġa_, denoting that the teeth are prominent, is also used of the rising of the sun. In a small Arabic tract[256] by the Sheikh ʿUlwân b. ʿAṭîyyâ of Ḥamâ, which brings forward the contest between Day and Night, a subject not infrequent[257] in Oriental literature, in which the two champions engage in a battle of respective excellence in prose and poetry, there also occurs a passage suitable for quotation here. The Night says in the course of her dispute: ‘To the string of these thy blameworthy qualities this must yet be added—that thou art changeable and many-coloured in thy various conditions, and not stedfast; thy beginning contradicts thy end, and thy interior is different from thy exterior. O what an utterly culpable quality is this, which scratches out the face of every merit! _Thou laughest at thy rising_, when thou rememberest weeping and mourning; and at thy extinction thou clothest thyself in thy most gorgeous of raiments, instead of putting on mourning garments.’ And the Day replies, in his own defence to his black antagonist: ‘What rank takest thou in comparison with me? What is thy gloominess and thy sombre seriousness in comparison with my _gay smiles_ (ḍaḥikî wabtisâmî)?’[258] It is not only the clear shining sunny sky that is called by the Arab poet ‘the Smiling;’ this attribute is applied also to other luminous things, e.g. to the glittering _Stars_ (not to the night-sky itself),[259] and to the Lightning, which is even called al-ḍâḥik, ‘the Laughing.’ In the Romance of ʿAntar there frequently occurs the expression ‘the Lightning laughed’ (al-barḳ yaḍḥak, e.g. XXIV. 65. 6).[260] Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî, an excellent Arabic poet, says in an elegy on the death of his father: I disapprove of merriment even in the _laughing_ (_i.e._ lightning) cloud, And let no cloud bring me rain, except a gloomy, dark one.[261]