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poem. It consists of five lines, each consisting of two parts. The
lines rhyme at the end. Inspired by the sight of his dead son, the
poet reacts to the only inescapable reality in life, ie. death. He
pours out his own sentiments about death in a manner which is analogous
to philosophical reflection. His individuality of perception tends to
subsume a universality of expression. The poem is pregnant with
stylistic devices such as juxtaposition, alliteration, and internal
rhyme. The concept of death, inevitable as it is, and the short span
of worldly life constitute the obligatory (skeletal) meaning of the
poem as it appears in the first line of the ST. The rest of the poem
is an extension of this meaning.
In the first line 'maniyyat' (death) rhymes with 'bariyyat'
eft
(mankind); "a'ri s (inescapable) rhymes with 'qara ri' (everlasting
existence). The semantic substance of this line could be boiled down
to this; that man is doomed to death, from which there is no escape;
and that his life on earth, however long it may be, is short-spanned.
The linguistic structure of the first part of the line reflects the
poet's decisive and unequivocal arbitration on the inevitability of
death. The falling tone placed on the final syllable of each word re-
echoes the solemn notes of a funeral tune, and adds more emphasis to
the logical meaning of the line. The first part of the line is so
structurally well-knit and linguistically well-formed that it can
easily attain a proverbial status. The subject-predicate relationship
in the first part of the line is decisively semantically emphatic,
whereas the negation in the second part, though equally and even more
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