Retribution

1876 –

1940

How I did hold in deep contempt
The slaves and queens of love!
How I disguised my feelings when
I met a deer or a dove!
How I did smile and sniff and rail
At lovers young and old;
How I denied, in days gone by,
O love, thy charms untold!
But now, alas! I find myself
In chains at Beauty's shrine:
The chains whose power I have denied
Are sapping, sapping mine.

From Myrtle and Myrrh (The Gorham Press, 1905) by Ameen Rihani. This poem is in the public domain.

Ameen Fares Rihani, who is regarded as a founder of Arab American literature and a major figure in the Mahjar movement, was born in Freike, Lebanon, then part of the Ottoman Empire, on November 24, 1876. Rihani was one of six children and the eldest son born to a Lebanese Christian (Maronite) silk manufacturer. Rihani moved to New York City with one of his brothers in 1888 and began to learn English. Three years later, Rihani became an American citizen.

Themes

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The Wanderer

I wander among the hills of alien lands
Where Nature her prerogative resigns
To Man; where Comfort in her shack reclines
And all the arts and sciences commands.
But in my soul
The eastern billows roll—
I hear the voices of my native strands.

Ameen Rihani

1921

After Reading King Lear

Is ’t strange that in the cycle of his woes,
Which shakes his cloud-embosomed peak of years
And shatters the very fountain of his tears,
He seeks the friendly path of winds and snows?
When Villainy forgiven more villainous grows,
And Treason in his robes herself attires,
And Love beneath Adultery’s sheet expires,

Ameen Rihani

1921

Poems

Retribution

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The Wanderer

After Reading King Lear

Poems

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Retribution

More by this poet

Lebanus

The Wanderer

After Reading King Lear

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