It is something more, however, than any supposed length or obscurity that has hitherto scared people from the Koran. The truth is that the atmosphere of our Arabian prophet’s thoughts is so different from what we breathe ourselves, that it needs a certain effort to transplant ourselves into it. That it can be done, and done triumphantly, may be proved by Mr. Browning’s _Saul_, as Semitic a poem as ever came from the desert itself. We see the whole life and character of the Bedawy in these lines:-- Oh, our manhood’s prime vigour! No spirit feels waste, Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock unto rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock Of the plunge in the pool’s living water, the hunt of the bear, And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair. And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine, And the locust flesh steeped in the pitcher, the deep draught of wine, And the sleep in the dried river-channel, where bulrushes tell That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy. It is not easy to catch the Arab spirit as Mr. Browning has caught it. Arab poetry is a sealed book to most, even among special Orientalists; they construe it, but it does not move them. The cause is to be found in the abrupt transition of thought which is required if we would enter into the spirit of desert song. The Arab stands in direct contrast to ourselves of the north. He is not in the least like an Englishman. His mind travels by entirely different routes from ours, and his body is built up of much more inflammable materials. His free desert air makes him impatient of control in a degree which we can scarcely understand in an organised community. It is difficult now to conceive a nation without cabinets and secretaries of State and policemen, yet to the Arab these things were not only unknown but inconceivable. He lived the free aimless satisfied life of a child. He was supremely content with the exquisite sense of simple existence, and was happy because he lived. Throughout a life that was full of energy, of passion, of strong endeavour after his ideal of desert perfectness, there was yet a restful sense of satisfied enjoyment, a feeling that life was of a surety well worth living. What his ideal was, and how different from any of the ideals of to-day, we know from his own poetry. It was, not in the gentler virtues that he prided himself:--