If a poem is a fictional, metered statement in which the author decides where the lines should end, how symbolic could a piece of art be of the age in which it was produced? How could a poem convey differently than an intellectual discourse? Such questions invoke the inevitable debate between the literariness of art and its social significance. I approach this issue through a close reading of two of A?mad Shawq?’s poems that thematize the poet’s relationship to Islam, among other traditions in Egypt’s history. As much as they engage in an intimate parodic dialogue with Shawq?’s favorite precursor, al-Mutanabb?, the two poems, “Rama??n Wallá” (Ramadan has Passed) and “al-Hil?l,” (The Crescent), reveal Shawq?’s pluralistic vision of Egyptian national identity. I argue that Shawq?’s work in general, and in these two poems in particular, includes valuable insights, not only into Shawq?’s relationship to the traditional Arabic literary canon, but also into his outlook on Egypt as an ultimately historical entity with a multifaceted trajectory that incorporates the comprehensiveness of the Egyptian self. This articulation of Egyptian national identity under colonial rule is crucial to Shawq?’s poetry, particularly when read against other authors of his age, e.g. ??fi? ?br?h?m, who did not see Islam as compatible with Pharaonic or Hellenic identity, for instance. This is not to say that Shawq? intended to diffuse the conflict between European colonialism and Egyptian nationalism, or that his poetry (marginal, singular, and unverifiable as it is in comparison to the prevailing intellectual debate pioneered by prominent Islamic figures like Im?m Mu?ammad Abduh and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani) creates a palpable rupture to the center of a dominant intellectual discourse. It is, however, fair to argue that the colonial situation afforded Shawq? the opportunity to problematize the conception of what it means to be Egyptian. Shawq?’s maverick view of Egypt’s historic and geographical pluralism falls within this paradigm and is particularly contentious, especially during his own time. Early twentieth-century Egypt witnessed heated debates on the country’s political destiny and the articulations of its identity, in addition to the re-surfacing of the Islamist ideology which saw Islam as an exclusivist condition that cancels out Egypt’s pre-Islamic past. Within this context, Shawq?’s two poems offer a cadenced yet subtle challenge to the idea that maintaining allegiance to various components of Egypt’s rich history must necessarily challenge the integrity of its Islamic present.