1) The personal nature of the experience, and nostalgia

• Belief in the personal (subjective) nature of the poetic experience, and longing for the lands of memory.
• Example Ibrahim Nagi remembering the house of his beloved, so his heart flutters and he weeps over the wounded past; and al-Hamshi in “The Withered Orange” recalling the memories of his youth.

3) Love of nature

• Devotion to nature, its beauty and intimate converse with it; their diwans and poems carry names that prove it: “Glimpses of Spring”, “Rays and Shadows”, “Return of the Shepherd”, “Over the Waves”, “The Spring” by Abu Shadi; “Songs on the Nile” by Saleh Jawdat; “Songs of the Cottage” by Mahmoud Hassan Ismail; “A Voice from the Sky” by Abu al-Qasim al-Shabibi.

• Pessimism, surrender to pain and grief, contemplation and despair — so much that Mahmoud Hassan Ismail titled a diwan “Where Can I Flee?”.
• There is no contradiction between loving nature and being pessimistic they flee to nature away from pain and pour their sorrows into it.

The homeland in the text

• The homeland does not appear as a piece of land with borders, but as a living existence and a living world that fills the poet’s feeling and overflows with life and movement, in which creatures beat with life.
• The phrase “ya kull… (O all…)” — a call plus the word “kull” (all) — recurs, followed by words from the world of sounds (a melody, a clap, a warble) that carry pleasing senses.
• The sources of these sounds are the palate of the bird, the wave of the river, and the footsteps of the shepherds over the grass.
• The word “kull” expresses generality and shows the amount of joy and rapture that floods the poet.
• The first verse is the focus of the text the homeland is everything he wishes for; in it is beauty in all its colours, and in it are magic and love.

Religious tolerance

• “To whom does the crescent raise its mosque? To whom does the cross show its temple?” — the mosque beside the church and the crescent alongside the cross.
• The children of one homeland are joined by love of it and readiness to defend it whatever the challenges.

• The night is the occupation, the trials and the hardships that threaten the homeland; its tyranny grew strong, but the poet promises to scatter it.
• Everyone faces it the shores, the flowers, the lives, the breeze, the wave, the bird, and the hands that light the lamp of progress and hopes.
• The means of resistance are not restricted to weapons — defending the homeland is an obligation on everyone belonging to it, by every possible means.
• And the poet brings back the dawn of the homeland from the hand of ordeal, shining like the sun above the world.

• The poet varied the music of the poem, so it came out bewitching, with an agility that hints at love, happiness and optimism.
• Rhyme spreads as the fragrance of love and hope for the homeland, and varies between the stanzas, as is the custom of the school of Apollo.
• Artistic unity is achieved by unity of subject (the poet’s love for his homeland and its lovely memories) and unity of psychological atmosphere (the overwhelming emotion of that love).
• The density and interweaving of images is a hallmark of Mahmoud Hassan Ismail, and it demands a special language rich in transferred and far-reaching metaphor.