Part 13
"I have no hoarded treasure, Yet have I rich content; The first from Allah to the Shah, The last to Hafiz went."
Another:--
"High heart, O Hafiz! though not thine Fine gold and silver ore; More worth to thee the gift of song, And the clear insight more."
Again:--
"O Hafiz! speak not of thy need; Are not these verses thine? Then all the poets are agreed, No man can less repine."
He asserts his dignity as bard and inspired man of his people. To the vizier returning from Mecca he says,--
"Boast not rashly, prince of pilgrims, of thy fortune. Thou hast indeed seen the temple; but I, the Lord of the temple. Nor has any man inhaled from the musk-bladder of the merchant, or from the musky morning-wind, that sweet air which I am permitted to breathe every hour of the day."
And with still more vigor in the following lines:--
"Oft have I said, I say it once more, I, a wanderer, do not stray from myself. I am a kind of parrot; the mirror is holden to me; What the Eternal says, I stammering say again. Give me what you will; I eat thistles as roses, And according to my food I grow and I give. Scorn me not, but know I have the pearl, And am only seeking one to receive it."
And his claim has been admitted from the first. The muleteers and camel-drivers, on their way through the desert, sing snatches of his songs, not so much for the thought, as for their joyful temper and tone; and the cultivated Persians know his poems by heart. Yet Hafiz does not appear to have set any great value on his songs, since his scholars collected them for the first time after his death.
In the following poem the soul is figured as the Phœnix alighting on Tuba, the Tree of Life:--
"My phœnix long ago secured His nest in the sky-vault's cope; In the body's cage immured, He was weary of life's hope.
"Round and round this heap of ashes Now flies the bird amain, But in that odorous niche of heaven Nestles the bird again.
"Once flies he upward, he will perch On Tuba's golden bough; His home is on that fruited arch Which cools the blest below.
"If over this world of ours His wings my phœnix spread, How gracious falls on land and sea The soul-refreshing shade!
"Either world inhabits he, Sees oft below him planets roll; His body is all of air compact, Of Allah's love his soul."
Here is an ode which is said to be a favorite with all educated Persians:--
"Come!--the palace of heaven rests on aëry pillars,-- Come, and bring me wine; our days are wind. I declare myself the slave of that masculine soul Which ties and alliance on earth once forever renounces. Told I thee yester-morn how the Iris of heaven Brought to me in my cup a gospel of joy? O high-flying falcon! the Tree of Life is thy perch; This nook of grief fits thee ill for a nest. Hearken! they call to thee down from the ramparts of heaven; I cannot divine what holds thee here in a net. I, too, have a counsel for thee; O, mark it and keep it, Since I received the same from the Master above: Seek not for faith or for truth in a world of light-minded girls; A thousand suitors reckons this dangerous bride. Cumber thee not for the world, and this my precept forget not, 'Tis but a toy that a vagabond sweetheart has left us. Accept whatever befalls; uncover thy brow from thy locks; Never to me nor to thee was option imparted; Neither endurance nor truth belongs to the laugh of the rose. The loving nightingale mourns;--cause enow for mourning;-- Why envies the bird the streaming verses of Hafiz? Know that a god bestowed on him eloquent speech."
The cedar, the cypress, the palm, the olive, and fig-tree, the birds that inhabit them, and the garden flowers, are never wanting in these musky verses, and are always named with effect. "The willows," he says, "bow themselves to every wind, out of shame for their unfruitfulness." We may open anywhere on a floral catalogue.
"By breath of beds of roses drawn, I found the grove in the morning pure, In the concert of the nightingales My drunken brain to cure.
"With unrelated glance I looked the rose in the eye: The rose in the hour of gloaming Flamed like a lamp hard-by.
"She was of her beauty proud, And prouder of her youth, The while unto her flaming heart The bulbul gave his truth.
"The sweet narcissus closed Its eye, with passion pressed; The tulips out of envy burned Moles in their scarlet breast.
"The lilies white prolonged Their sworded tongue to the smell; The clustering anemones Their pretty secrets tell."
Presently we have,--
"All day the rain Bathed the dark hyacinths in vain, The flood may pour from morn till night Nor wash the pretty Indians white."
And so onward, through many a page.
This picture of the first days of Spring, from Enweri, seems to belong to Hafiz:--
"O'er the garden water goes the wind alone To rasp and to polish the cheek of the wave; The fire is quenched on the dear hearthstone, But it burns again on the tulips brave."
Friendship is a favorite topic of the Eastern poets, and they have matched on this head the absoluteness of Montaigne.
Hafiz says,--
"Thou learnest no secret until thou knowest friendship; since to the unsound no heavenly knowledge enters."
Ibn Jemin writes thus:--
"Whilst I disdain the populace, I find no peer in higher place. Friend is a word of royal tone, Friend is a poem all alone. Wisdom is like the elephant, Lofty and rare inhabitant: He dwells in deserts or in courts; With hucksters he has no resorts."
Dschami says,--
"A friend is he, who, hunted as a foe, So much the kindlier shows him than before; Throw stones at him, or ruder javelins throw, He builds with stone and steel a firmer floor."
Of the amatory poetry of Hafiz we must be very sparing in our citations, though it forms the staple of the "Divan." He has run through the whole gamut of passion,--from the sacred to the borders, and over the borders, of the profane. The same confusion of high and low, the celerity of flight and allusion which our colder muses forbid, is habitual to him. From the plain text,--
"The chemist of love Will this perishing mould, Were it made out of mire, Transmute into gold,"--
he proceeds to the celebration of his passion; and nothing in his religious or in his scientific traditions is too sacred or too remote to afford a token of his mistress. The Moon thought she knew her own orbit well enough; but when she saw the curve on Zuleika's cheek, she was at a loss:--
"And since round lines are drawn My darling's lips about, The very Moon looks puzzled on, And hesitates in doubt If the sweet curve that rounds thy mouth Be not her true way to the South."
His ingenuity never sleeps:--
"Ah, could I hide me in my song, To kiss thy lips from which it flows!"
and plays in a thousand pretty courtesies:--
"Fair fall thy soft heart! A good work wilt thou do? O, pray for the dead Whom thine eyelashes slew!"
And what a nest has he found for his bonny bird to take up her abode in!--
"They strew in the path of kings and czars Jewels and gems of price: But for thy head I will pluck down stars, And pave thy way with eyes.
"I have sought for thee a costlier dome Than Mahmoud's palace high, And thou, returning, find thy home In the apple of Love's eye."
Then we have all degrees of passionate abandonment:--
"I know this perilous love-lane No whither the traveller leads, Yet my fancy the sweet scent of Thy tangled tresses feeds.
"In the midnight of thy locks, I renounce the day; In the ring of thy rose-lips, My heart forgets to pray."
And sometimes his love rises to a religious sentiment:--
"Plunge in yon angry waves, Renouncing doubt and care; The flowing of the seven broad seas Shall never wet thy hair.
"Is Allah's face on thee Bending with love benign, And thou not less on Allah's eye O fairest! turnest thine."
We add to these fragments of Hafiz a few specimens from other poets.
NISAMI.
"While roses bloomed along the plain, The nightingale to the falcon said, 'Why, of all birds, must thou be dumb? With closed mouth thou utterest, Though dying, no last word to man. Yet sitt'st thou on the hand of princes, And feedest on the grouse's breast, Whilst I, who hundred thousand jewels Squander in a single tone, Lo! I feed myself with worms, And my dwelling is the thorn.'-- The falcon answered, 'Be all ear: I, experienced in affairs, See fifty things, say never one; But thee the people prizes not. Who, doing nothing, say'st a thousand. To me, appointed to the chase, The king's hand gives the grouse's breast; Whilst a chatterer like thee Must gnaw worms in the thorn. Farewell!'"
The following passages exhibit the strong tendency of the Persian poets to contemplative and religious poetry and to allegory.
ENWERI.
BODY AND SOUL.
"A painter in China once painted a hall;-- Such a web never hung on an emperor's wall;-- One half from his brush with rich colors did run, The other he touched with a beam of the sun; So that all which delighted the eye in one side, The same, point for point, in the other replied.
"In thee, friend, that Tyrian chamber is found; Thine the star-pointing roof, and the base on the ground: Is one half depicted with colors less bright? Beware that the counterpart blazes with light!"
IBN JEMIN.
"I read on the porch of a palace bold In a purple tablet letters cast,-- 'A house though a million winters old, A house of earth comes down at last; Then quarry thy stones from the crystal All, And build the dome that shall not fall.'"
"What need," cries the mystic Feisi, "of palaces and tapestry? What need even of a bed?"
"The eternal Watcher, who doth wake All night in the body's earthen chest, Will of thine arms a pillow make, And a bolster of thy breast."
Ferideddin Attar wrote the "Bird Conversations," a mystical tale, in which the birds, coming together to choose their king, resolve on a pilgrimage to Mount Kaf, to pay their homage to the Simorg. From this poem, written five hundred years ago, we cite the following passage, as a proof of the identity of mysticism in all periods. The tone is quite modern. In the fable, the birds were soon weary of the length and difficulties of the way, and at last almost all gave out. Three only persevered, and arrived before the throne of the Simorg.
"The bird-soul was ashamed; Their body was quite annihilated; They had cleaned themselves from the dust, And were by the light ensouled. What was, and was not,--the Past,-- Was wiped out from their breast. The sun from near-by beamed Clearest light into their soul; The resplendence of the Simorg beamed As one back from all three. They knew not, amazed, if they Were either this or that. They saw themselves all as Simorg, Themselves in the eternal Simorg. When to the Simorg up they looked, They beheld him among themselves; And when they looked on each other, They saw themselves in the Simorg. A single look grouped the two parties, The Simorg emerged, the Simorg vanished, This in that, and that in this, As the world has never heard. So remained they, sunk in wonder, Thoughtless in deepest thinking, And quite unconscious of themselves. Speechless prayed they to the Highest To open this secret, And to unlock _Thou_ and _We_. There came an answer without tongue.-- 'The Highest is a sun-mirror; Who comes to Him sees himself therein, Sees body and soul, and soul and body; When you came to the Simorg, Three therein appeared to you, And, had fifty of you come, So had you seen yourselves as many. Him has none of us yet seen. Ants see not the Pleiades. Can the gnat grasp with his teeth The body of the elephant? What you see is He not; What you hear is He not. The valleys which you traverse, The actions which you perform, They lie under our treatment And among our properties. You as three birds are amazed, Impatient, heartless, confused: Far over you am I raised, Since I am in act Simorg. Ye blot out my highest being, That ye may find yourselves on my throne; Forever ye blot out yourselves, As shadows in the sun. Farewell!'"
INSPIRATION.
INSPIRATION.
IT was Watt who told King George III. that he dealt in an article of which kings were said to be fond,--Power. 'Tis certain that the one thing we wish to know is, where power is to be bought. But we want a finer kind than that of commerce; and every reasonable man would give any price of house and land, and future provision, for condensation, concentration, and the recalling at will of high mental energy. Our money is only a second best. We would jump to buy power with it, that is, intellectual perception moving the will. That is first best. But we don't know where the shop is. If Watt knew, he forgot to tell us the number of the street. There are times when the intellect is so active that everything seems to run to meet it. Its supplies are found without much thought as to studies. Knowledge runs to the man, and the man runs to knowledge. In spring, when the snow melts, the maple-trees flow with sugar, and you cannot get tubs fast enough; but it is only for a few days. The hunter on the prairie, at the right season, has no need of choosing his ground; east, west, by the river, by the timber, he is everywhere near his game. But the favorable conditions are rather the exception than the rule.
The aboriginal man in geology, and in the dim lights of Darwin's microscope, is not an engaging figure. We are very glad that he ate his fishes and snails and marrow-bones out of our sight and hearing, and that his doleful experiences were got through with so very long ago. They combed his mane, they pared his nails, cut off his tail, set him on end, sent him to school, and made him pay taxes, before he could begin to write his sad story for the compassion or the repudiation of his descendants, who are all but unanimous to disown him. We must take him as we find him,--pretty well on in his education, and, in all _our_ knowledge of him, an interesting creature, with a will, an invention, an imagination, a conscience, and an inextinguishable hope.
The Hunterian law of _arrested development_ is not confined to vegetable and animal structure, but reaches the human intellect also. In the savage man, thought is infantile; and in the civilized, unequal, and ranging up and down a long scale. In the best races it is rare and imperfect. In happy moments it is reinforced, and carries out what were rude suggestions to larger scope, and to clear and grand conclusions. The poet cannot see a natural phenomenon which does not express to him a correspondent fact in his mental experience; he is made aware of a power to carry on and complete the metamorphosis of natural into spiritual facts. Everything which we hear for the first time was expected by the mind; the newest discovery was expected. In the mind we call this enlarged power Inspiration. I believe that nothing great and lasting can be done except by inspiration, by leaning on the secret augury. The man's insight and power are interrupted and occasional; he can see and do this or that cheap task at will, but it steads him not beyond. He is fain to make the ulterior step by mechanical means. It cannot so be done. That ulterior step is to be also by inspiration; if not through him, then by another man. Every real step is by what a poet called "lyrical glances," by lyrical facility, and never by main strength and ignorance. Years of mechanic toil will only seem to do it; it will not so be done.
Inspiration is like yeast. 'Tis no matter in which of half a dozen ways you procure the infection; you can apply one or the other equally well to your purpose, and get your loaf of bread. And every earnest workman, in whatever kind, knows some favorable conditions for his task. When I wish to write on any topic, 'tis of no consequence what kind of book or man gives me a hint or a motion, nor how far off that is from my topic.
Power is the first good. Rarey can tame a wild horse; but if he could give speed to a dull horse, were not that better? The toper finds, without asking, the road to the tavern, but the poet does not know the pitcher that holds his nectar. Every youth should know the way to prophecy as surely as the miller understands how to let on the water or the engineer the steam. A rush of thoughts is the only conceivable prosperity that can come to us. Fine clothes, equipages, villa, park, social consideration, cannot cover up real poverty and insignificance from my own eyes, or from others like mine.
Thoughts let us into realities. Neither miracle, nor magic, nor any religious tradition, not the immortality of the private soul, is incredible, after we have experienced an insight, a thought. I think it comes to some men but once in their life, sometimes a religious impulse, sometimes an intellectual insight. But what we want is consecutiveness. 'Tis with us a flash of light, then a long darkness, then a flash again. The separation of our days by sleep almost destroys identity. Could we but turn these fugitive sparkles into an astronomy of Copernican worlds! With most men, scarce a link of memory holds yesterday and to-day together. Their house and trade and families serve them as ropes to give a coarse continuity. But they have forgotten the thoughts of yesterday; they say to-day what occurs to them, and something else to-morrow. This insecurity of possession, this quick ebb of power,--as if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand,--tantalizes us. We cannot make the inspiration consecutive. A glimpse, a point of view that by its brightness excludes the purview, is granted, but no panorama. A fuller inspiration should cause the point to flow and become a line, should bend the line and complete the circle. To-day the electric machine will not work, no spark will pass; then presently the world is all a cat's back, all sparkle and shock. Sometimes there is no sea-fire, and again the sea is aglow to the horizon. Sometimes the Æolian harp is dumb all day in the window, and again it is garrulous, and tells all the secrets of the world. In June the morning is noisy with birds; in August they are already getting old and silent.
Hence arises the question, Are these moods in any degree within control? If we knew how to command them! But where is the Franklin with kite or rod for this fluid?--a Franklin who can draw off electricity from Jove himself, and convey it into the arts of life, inspire men, take them off their feet, withdraw them from the life of trifles and gain and comfort, and make the world transparent, so that they can read the symbols of nature? What metaphysician has undertaken to enumerate the tonics of the torpid mind, the rules for the recovery of inspiration? That is least within control which is best in them. Of the _modus_ of inspiration we have no knowledge. But in the experience of meditative men there is a certain agreement as to the conditions of reception. Plato, in his seventh Epistle, notes that the perception is only accomplished by long familiarity with the objects of intellect, and a life according to the things themselves. "Then a light, as if leaping from a fire, will on a sudden be enkindled in the soul, and will then itself nourish itself."
He said again, "The man who is his own master knocks in vain at the doors of poetry." The artists must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give. What is a man good for without enthusiasm? and what is enthusiasm but this daring of ruin for its object? There are thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls; we are not the less drawn to them. The moth flies into the flame of the lamp; and Swedenborg must solve the problems that haunt him, though he be crazed or killed.
There is genius as well in virtue as in intellect. 'Tis the doctrine of faith over works. The raptures of goodness are as old as history and new with this morning's sun. The legends of Arabia, Persia, and India are of the same complexion as the Christian. Socrates, Menu, Confucius, Zertusht,--we recognize in all of them this ardor to solve the hints of thought.
I hold that ecstasy will be found normal, or only an example on a higher plane of the same gentle gravitation by which stones fall and rivers run. Experience identifies. Shakspeare seems to you miraculous; but the wonderful juxtapositions, parallelisms, transfers, which his genius effected were all to him locked together as links of a chain, and the mode precisely as conceivable and familiar to higher intelligence as the index-making of the literary hack. The result of the hack is inconceivable to the type-setter who waits for it.
We must prize our own youth. Later, we want heat to execute our plans: the good-will, the knowledge, the whole armory of means, are all present; but a certain heat that once used not to fail refuses its office, and all is vain until this capricious fuel is supplied. It seems a semi-animal heat; as if tea, or wine, or sea-air, or mountains, or a genial companion, or a new thought suggested in book or conversation, could fire the train, wake the fancy, and the clear perception. Pit-coal,--where to find it? 'Tis of no use that your engine is made like a watch,--that you are a good workman, and know how to drive it, if there is no coal. We are waiting until some tyrannous idea emerging out of heaven shall seize and bereave us of this liberty with which we are falling abroad. Well, we have the same hint or suggestion, day by day. "I am not," says the man, "at the top of my condition to-day, but the favorable hour will come when I can command all my powers, and when that will be easy to do which is at this moment impossible." See how the passions augment our force,--anger, love, ambition! sometimes sympathy, and the expectation of men. Garrick said, that on the stage his great paroxysms surprised himself as much as his audience. If this is true on this low plane, it is true on the higher. Swedenborg's genius was the perception of the doctrine "that the Lord flows into the spirits of angels and of men"; and all poets have signalized their consciousness of rare moments when they were superior to themselves,--when a light, a freedom, a power came to them, which lifted them to performances far better than they could reach at other times; so that a religious poet once told me that "he valued his poems, not because they were his, but because they were not." He thought the angels brought them to him.
Jacob Behmen said: "Art has not wrote here, nor was there any time to consider how to set it punctually down according to the right understanding of the letters, but all was ordered according to the direction of the spirit, which often went on haste,--so that the penman's hand, by reason he was not accustomed to it, did often shake. And, though I could have written in a more accurate, fair, and plain manner, the burning fire often forced forward with speed, and the hand and pen must hasten directly after it, for it comes and goes as a sudden shower. In one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more, than if I had been many years together at an university."