‘By dreary nights I’m wasted, Absence makes my hopes expire; My tears, like pearls, are dropping, And my heart is wrapt in fire. Whose is like my condition? Scarcely know I remedy. Alas! did not estrangement Draw my tears, I would not sigh. ‘O turtle dove! acquaint me Wherefore thus dost thou lament? Art thou so stung by absence? Of thy wings deprived, and pent? He saith, ‘Our griefs are equal; Worn away with love, I lie.’ Alas! did not estrangement Draw my tears, I would not sigh. ‘O First and Everlasting! Show thy favour yet to me. Thy slave, Ahh’mad El-Bek’ree, [150] Hath no Lord excepting Thee. By Tá-Há, [151] the great prophet, Do thou not his wish deny. Alas! did not estrangement Draw my tears, I would not sigh.’ “I must translate a few more lines, to show more strongly the similarity of these songs to that of Solomon; and lest it should be thought that I have varied the expressions, I shall not attempt to translate into verse. In the same collection of poems sung at Zikrs is one which begins with these lines:— ‘O gazelle from among the gazelles of El-Yem’en! I am thy slave without cost; O thou small of age, and fresh of skin! O thou who art scarce past the time of drinking milk!’ “In the first of these verses we have a comparison exactly agreeing with that in the concluding verse of Solomon’s Song; for the word which, in our Bible, is translated a ‘roe,’ is used in Arabic as synonymous with ghaza’l (or a gazelle); and the mountains of El-Yem’en are ‘the mountains of spices.’ This poem ends with the following lines:— ‘The phantom of thy form visited me in my slumber. I said, “O phantom of slumber! who sent thee?” He said, “He sent me whom thou knowest; He whose love occupies thee!” The beloved of my heart visited me in the darkness of night; I stood, to show him honour, until he sat down. I said, “O thou my petition, and all my desire, Hast thou come at midnight, and not feared the watchmen?” He said to me, “I feared, but, however, love Had taken from me my soul and my breath.”’ “Compare the above with the second and five following verses of the fifth chapter of Solomon’s Song. Finding that songs of this description are extremely numerous, and almost the only poems sung at Zikrs; that they are composed for this purpose, and intended only to have a spiritual sense (though certainly not understood in such a sense by the generality of the vulgar); I cannot entertain any doubt as to the design of Solomon’s Song.”