Written After Reading King Lear
Long is his course, O master of our woes,
And joys, and tears, our passions and desires,
In nature’s school—in hell-begotten fires;
Dread is the agony and fell the throes
Which with the Night and Storm he undergoes,
While Treason in his robes herself attires,
And Love beneath adultery’s sheet expires,
And mocked Sincerity sincerer grows.
To vie with wailing winds and weeping clouds
And valleys shrieking in the fangs of storms,
This Human Hurricane thou didst create;
But just as soon as Death this horror shrouds,
I hear the distant cry of fiery forms,
Ay, and the creaking of hell’s deepest gate.
From Myrtle and Myrrh (The Gorham Press, 1905) by Ameen Rihani. This poem is in the public domain.
Ameen Rihani
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.