One of the most relevant and important themes that reoccur throughout the Al-Mu'allaqat is that of love, specifically love personified through nature. All of the poets in this literary collection seem to personify their love through animals and objects such as through their camels, horses, waterfalls, and several others. Perhaps the most recognized of these poets is Imr al-Qais, who employs a long nasib, the romantic prelude, to declare his grief over his lost love. The next poet, Tarafa, engages in a rather unusual but similar personification of love with his camel, throughout the poem it is difficult to differentiate between his description of his camel and his lost love. Labid's The Centenarian exploits the passage of time to illustrate his success with dismissing his former lover. Labid uses embellished descriptions of nature to personify his love and scrutinizes the destruction caused by time, questioning why he and his companions continue to age and decay. The common theme of love forms a bridge between these four poems and throughout the rest of Mu'allaqat. .
The first of these poems, The Wandering King, is especially amorous in regard to Imr al-Qais' description of his horse. Imr al-Qais uses all of his senses to capture the majesty of his beast, to a point where it is difficult to discern between his lost love and his beast. .
His description begins: "His flanks are the flanks of a fawn, his legs like an ostriches look from behind, and he bares his legs' gap with a full tail, not askew, reaching almost to the ground; his back, as he stands beside the tent, seems the pounding-slab of a bride's perfumes, or the smooth stone a colocynth's broken on. (65.12-17)".
The description of his horse is reminiscent of Fatimah one of his former lovers, whom he describes a few lines before. Imr al-Qais describes her glance, fleeting like a fawn's, and her complexion "like the first egg of the ostrich-its whiteness mingled with yellow-" (63.
