Chapter 6

"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 favourite topic of the Eastern poets, and they have matched on this head the absoluteness of Montaigne.

Hafiz says, "Thou learnest no secret until thou knoweth 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 paths 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 your 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 colours 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 to 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 colours 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; For ever ye blot out yourselves, As shadows in the sun. Farewell!'"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote D: or Jámi.]

The Charm of Womankind

SOME OPINIONS OF MEN ON "THE ETERNAL FEMININE"

_With a Frontispiece in Colours from a Painting by_ W. A. BREAKSPEARE.

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Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

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Salámán and Absál

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LIFE OF EDWARD FITZGERALD and an ESSAY ON PERSIAN POETRY

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Transcriber's Note: Several errors in the original book have been corrected for this eBook.

In the text of _Salámán and Absál_ the section headers for parts II, V and XI were omitted—these have been checked in _FitzGerald's Salámán and Absál: A Study_ by A. J. Arberry and put in the correct places.

Also in _Salámán and Absál_, in part XXI, a paragraph break was missing. This has been re-inserted.

In addition, the following typographical errors have been corrected:

p1 Bury St. Edmunds, During changed to Bury St. Edmunds. During

p14 When the Imám rose from his lectures, they use to changed to When the Imám rose from his lectures, they used to

p34 The mighty Mahmúd, the victorious Lord changed to The mighty Máhmúd, the victorious Lord

p16 A.B. 1090 changed to A.D. 1090

p18 'Khayyám changed to "'Khayyám

p19 Naishápur I went to his final resting place changed to Naishápúr I went to his final resting place

p19 the stone was hidden under them.'" changed to the stone was hidden under them."'"

Footnote B 500 vêcu changed to vécu

p29 is neither Here nor There?" changed to is neither Here nor There!"

p36 If clings my Being— changed to It clings my Being—

p47 A Kurd perplext by Fortunes Frolics changed to A Kurd perplext by Fortune's Frolics

p47 Sees it on anothers's Ancle— changed to Sees it on another's Ancle—

p53 Stirr'd not a Step nor set Design afoot changed to Stirr'd not a Step nor set Design a-foot

p54 Well was is said, changed to Well was it said,

p91 Beauty of the Brighest wanes; changed to Beauty of the Brightest wanes;

p108 his name: of Jamschid, the binder changed to his name; of Jamschid, the binder

p111 graybeard of the sky. He says:— changed to graybeard of the sky." He says:—

p122 how the Iris of heaven; changed to how the Iris of heaven

p124 Moles in their scarlet brest changed to Moles in their scarlet breast

Archaic and inconsistent spellings, however, have been retained, particularly with reference to transliterated words.