Chapter 2
Death, from being a silent messenger who punctually fulfilled his duty, became a grasping, greedy foe (_quatrain_ 56). In the Psalms (xci. 3-6) he comes as a hunter with snares and arrows. Also "der Tôt wil mit mir ringen."[11] In ancient times Death was not a being that slew, but simply one that fetched away to the underworld, a messenger. So was the soul of the beggar fetched away by angels and carried into Abraham's bosom. An older view was the death-goddess, who receives the dead men in her house and does not fetch them. They are left alone to begin the long and gloomy journey, provided with various things.[12] "Chacun remonte à son tour le calvaire des siècles. Chacun retrouve les peines, chacun retrouve l'espoir désespéré et la folie des siècles. Chacun remet ses pas dans les pas de ceux qui furent, de ceux qui luttèrent avant lui contre la mort, nièrant la mort,--sont morts"[13] (_quatrain_ 57). It is the same for men and trees (_quatrain_ 59). This vision of Abu'l-Ala's is to be compared with Milton's "men as trees walking," a kind of second sight, a blind man's pageant. In reference to haughty folk, an Arab proverb says that "There is not a poplar which has reached its Lord." But on the other hand, "There are some virtues which dig their own graves,"[14] and with regard to excessive polishing of swords (_quatrain_ 60) we have the story of the poet Abu Tammam, related by Ibn Khallikan. He tells us how the poet once recited verses in the presence of some people, and how one of them was a philosopher who said, "This man will not live long, for I have seen in him a sharpness of wit and penetration and intelligence. From this I know that the mind will consume the body, even as a sword of Indian steel eats through its scabbard." Still, in Arabia, where swords were so generally used that a priest would strap one to his belt before he went into the pulpit, there was no unanimous opinion as to the polishing,--which, by the way, was done with wood. A poet boasted that his sword was often or was rarely polished, according as he wished to emphasise the large amount of work accomplished or the excellence of the polishing. Imru'al-Kais says that his sword does not recall the day when it was polished. Another poet says his sword is polished every day and "with a fresh tooth bites off the people's heads."[15] This vigour of expression was not only used for concrete subjects. There exists a poem, dating from a little time before Mahomet, which says that cares (_quatrain_ 62) are like the camels, roaming in the daytime on the distant pastures and at night returning to the camp. They would collect as warriors round the flag. It was the custom for each family to have a flag (_quatrain_ 65), a cloth fastened to a lance, round which it gathered. Mahomet's big standard was called the Eagle,--and, by the bye, his seven swords had names, such as "possessor of the spine."
With _quatrain_ 68 we may compare the verses of a Christian poet, quoted by Tabari:
And where is now the lord of Hadr, he that built it and laid taxes on the land of Tigris? A house of marble he established, whereof the covering was made of plaster; in the galbes were nests of birds. He feared no sorry fate. See, the dominion of him has departed. Loneliness is on his threshold.
"Consider how you treat the poor," said Dshafer ben Mahomet, who pilgrimaged from Mecca to Baghdad between fifty and sixty times; "they are the treasures of this world, the keys of the other." Take care lest it befall you as the prince (_quatrain_ 69) within whose palace now the wind is reigning. "If a prince would be successful," says Machiavelli, "it is requisite that he should have a spirit capable of turns and variations, in accordance with the variations of the wind." Says an Arab mystic, "The sighing of a poor man for that which he can never reach has more of value than the praying of a rich man through a thousand years." And in connection with this quatrain we may quote Blunt's rendering of Zohair:
I have learned that he who giveth nothing, deaf to his friends' begging, loosed shall be to the world's tooth-strokes: fools' feet shall tread on him.
As for the power of the weak, we have some instances from Abbaside history. One of the caliphs wanted to do deeds of violence in Baghdad. Scornfully he asked of his opponents if they could prevent him. "Yes," they answered, "we will fight you with the arrows of the night." And he desisted from his plans. Prayers, complaints, and execrations which the guiltless, fighting his oppressor, sends up to heaven are called the arrows of the night and are, the Arabs tell us, invariably successful. This belief may solace you for the foundation of suffering (_quatrain_ 71), which, by the way, is also in the philosophic system of Zeno the Stoic. Taking the four elements of Empedocles, he says that three of them are passive, or suffering, elements while only fire is active, and that not wholly. It was Zeno's opinion that everything must be active or must suffer. . . . An explanation for our suffering is given by Soame Jenyns, who flourished in the days when, as his editor could write, referring to his father Sir Roger Jenyns, "the order of knighthood was received by gentlemen with the profoundest gratitude." Soame's thesis is his "Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil," that human sufferings are compensated by the enjoyment possibly experienced by some higher order of beings which inflict them, is ridiculed by Samuel Johnson. We have Jenyns's assurance that
To all inferior animals 'tis given To enjoy the state allotted them by Heav'n.
And (_quatrain_ 75) we may profitably turn to Coleridge:
Oh, what a wonder seems the fear of death! Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep; Babes, children, youths and men, Night following night, for threescore years and ten.
We should be reconciled, says Abu'l-Ala (_quatrain_ 76), even to the Christian kings of Ghassan, in the Hauran. These were the hereditary enemies of the kings of Hirah. On behalf of the Greek emperors of Constantinople they controlled the Syrian Arabs. But they disappeared before the triumphant Moslems, the last of their kings being Jabalah II., who was dethroned in the year 637. His capital was Bosra, on the road between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. Nowadays the district is chiefly occupied by nomads; to the Hebrews it was known as Bashan, famous for its flocks and oak plantations. We can still discern the traces of troglodyte dwellings of this epoch. The afore-mentioned Jabalah was a convert to Islam, but, being insulted by a Mahometan, he returned to Christianity and betook himself to Constantinople, where he died. But in the time of Abu'l-Ala, the Ghassanites were again in the exercise of authority. "These were the kings of Ghassan," says Abu'l-Ala, "who followed the course of the dead; each of them is now but a tale that is told, and God knows who is good." A poet is a liar, say the Arabs, and the greatest poet is the greatest liar. But in this case Abu'l-Ala in prose was not so truthful as in poetry; for if Jabalah's house had vanished, the Ghassanites were still a power. The poet, for our consolation, has a simile (_quatrain_ 77) that may be put against a passage of Homer:
As with autumnal harvests cover'd o'er, And thick bestrown, lies Ceres' sacred floor, When round and round, with never-weary'd pain The trampling steers beat out th' unnumber'd grain: So the fierce coursers, as the chariot rolls, Tread down whole ranks, and crush out heroes' souls.[16]
For everything there is decay, and (_quatrain_ 78) for the striped garment of a long cut which now we are unable to identify.
We read in the Wisdom of Solomon: "As when an arrow is shot at a mark, it parteth the air which immediately cometh together again, so that a man cannot know where it went through." In this place (_quatrain_ 84), if the weapon's road of air is not in vain it will discover justice in the sky. How much the Arabs were averse from frigid justice is to be observed in the matter of recompense for slaying. There existed a regular tariff--so many camels or dates--but they looked askance upon the person who was willing to accept this and forgo his vengeance. If a man was anxious to accept a gift as satisfaction and at the same time to escape reproach, he shot an arrow into the air. Should it come down unspotted, he was able to accept the gift; if it was bloody, then he was obliged to seek for blood. The Arabs, by the way, had been addicted to an ancient game, but Islam tried to stamp this out, like other joys of life. The players had ten arrows, which they shot into the air; seven of them bestowed a right to the portion of a camel, the other three did not. Abu'l-Ala was fond of using arrows metaphorically. "And if one child," he writes to a distinguished sheikh, "were to ask another in the dead of night in a discussion: 'Who is rewarded for staying at home many times what he would be rewarded for going on either pilgrimage?' and the second lad answered: 'Mahomet, son of Sa'id,' his arrow would have fallen near the mark; for your protection of your subjects (_quatrain_ 86) is a greater duty than either pilgrimage." And our poet calls to mind some benefits attached to slavery (_quatrain_ 88): for an offence against morals a slave could receive fifty blows, whereas the punishment of a freeman was double. A married person who did not discharge his vows was liable to be stoned to death, whereas a slave in similar circumstances was merely struck a certain number of blows. It was and still is customary, says von Kremer, if anything is broken by a slave, forthwith to curse Satan, who is supposed to concern himself in very trifling matters. The sympathy Abu'l-Ala displays for men of small possessions may be put beside the modicum (_quatrain_ 92) he wanted for himself. And these necessaries of Abu'l-Ala, the ascetic, must appeal to us as more sincerely felt than those of Ibn at-Ta'awizi, who was of opinion that when seven things are collected together in the drinking-room it is not reasonable to stay away. The list is as follows: a melon, honey, roast meat, a young girl, wax lights, a singer, and wine. But Ibn at-Ta'awizi was a literary person, and in Arabic the names of all these objects begin with the same letter. Abu'l-Ala was more inclined to celebrate the wilderness. He has portrayed (_quatrain_ 93) a journey in the desert where a caravan, in order to secure itself against surprises, is accustomed to send on a spy, who scours the country from the summit of a hill or rock. Should he perceive a sign of danger, he will wave his hand in warning. From Lebid's picture of another journey--which the pre-Islamic poet undertook to the coast lands of Hajar on the Persian Gulf--we learn that when they entered a village he and his party were greeted by the crowing of cocks and the shaking of wooden rattles (_quatrain_ 95), which in the Eastern Christian Churches are substituted for bells. . . . And the mediæval leper, in his grey gown, was obliged to hold a similar object, waving it about and crying as he went: "Unclean! unclean!"
An ambitious man desired, regardless of expense, to hand down his name to posterity (_quatrain_ 99). "Write your name in a prayer," said Epictetus, "and it will remain after you." "But I would have a crown of gold," was the reply. "If you have quite made up your mind to have a crown," said Epictetus, "take a crown of roses, for it is more beautiful." In the words of Heredia:
Déjà le Temps brandit l'arme fatale. As-tu L'espoir d'éterniser le bruit de ta vertu? Un vil lierre suffit à disjoindre un trophée;
Et seul, aux blocs épars des marbres triomphaux Où ta gloire en ruine est par l'herbe étouffée, Quelque faucheur Samnite ébréchera sa faulx.
Would we write our names so that they endure for ever? There was in certain Arab circles a heresy which held that the letters of the alphabet (_quatrain_ 101) are metamorphoses of men. And Magaira, who founded a sect, maintained that the letters of the alphabet are like limbs of God. According to him, when God wished to create the world, He wrote with His own hands the deeds of men, both the good and the bad; but, at sight of the sins which men were going to commit, He entered into such a fury that He sweated, and from His sweat two seas were formed, the one of salt water and the other of sweet water. From the first one the infidels were formed, and from the second the Shi'ites. But to this view of the everlasting question you may possibly prefer what is advanced (_quatrains_ 103-7) and paraphrased as an episode: Whatever be the wisdom of the worms, we bow before the silence of the rose. As for Abu'l-Ala, we leave him now prostrated (_quatrain_ 108) before the silence of the rolling world. It is a splendour that was seen by Alfred de Vigny:
Je roule avec dédain, sans voir et sans entendre, A côté des fourmis les populations; Je ne distingue pas leur terrier de leur cendre. J'ignore en les portant les noms des nations. On me dit une mère et je suis une tombe. Mon hiver prend vos morts comme son hécatombe, Mon printemps n'entend pas vos adorations.
Avant vous j'étais belle et toujours parfumée, J'abandonnais au vent mes cheveux tout entiers. . . .
Footnotes
[1] _Cf_. Lyall, _Ancient Arabian Poets_.
[2] _Cf_. Whittaker, _The Neo-Platonists_.
[3] Of course I use Professor Margoliouth's superb edition of the letters.
[4] _Cf_. Thielmann, _Streifzüge im Kaukasus, etc_.
[5] _Cf_. Ambros, _Geschichte der Musik_, 1862.
[6] _Cf_. Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, vii. 174.
[7] Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, vol. i., p. 254.
[8] Meredith, _The Shaving of Shagpat_.
[9] Anatole France, _Le Puits de Sainte Claire_.
[10] Quoted by Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, vol. 2, p. 845.
[11] Stoufenb., 1126.
[12] _Cf_. in Scandinavia the death-goddess Hel.
[13] Romain Rolland, _Jean Christophe_.
[14] Ella d'Arcy, _Modern Instances_.
[15] Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Schwarzlose, _Die Waffen der alten Araber, aus ihren Dichtern dargestellt_.
[16] Pope, _Iliad_, xx. 577.
THE DIWAN OF ABU'L-ALA
I
Abandon worship in the mosque and shrink From idle prayer, from sacrificial sheep, For Destiny will bring the bowl of sleep Or bowl of tribulation--you shall drink.
II
The scarlet eyes of Morning are pursued By Night, who growls along the narrow lane; But as they crash upon our world the twain Devour us and are strengthened for the feud.
III
Vain are your dreams of marvellous emprise, Vainly you sail among uncharted spaces, Vainly seek harbour in this world of faces If it has been determined otherwise.
IV
Behold, my friends, there is reserved for me The splendour of our traffic with the sky: You pay your court to Saturn, whereas I Am slain by One far mightier than he.
V
You that must travel with a weary load Along this darkling, labyrinthine street-- Have men with torches at your head and feet If you would pass the dangers of the road.
VI
So shall you find all armour incomplete And open to the whips of circumstance, That so shall you be girdled of mischance Till you be folded in the winding-sheet.
VII
Have conversation with the wind that goes Bearing a pack of loveliness and pain: The golden exultation of the grain And the last, sacred whisper of the rose
VIII
But if in some enchanted garden bloom The rose imperial that will not fade, Ah! shall I go with desecrating spade And underneath her glories build a tomb?
IX
Shall I that am as dust upon the plain Think with unloosened hurricanes to fight? Or shall I that was ravished from the night Fall on the bosom of the night again?
X
Endure! and if you rashly would unfold That manuscript whereon our lives are traced, Recall the stream which carols thro' the waste And in the dark is rich with alien gold.
XI
Myself did linger by the ragged beach, Whereat wave after wave did rise and curl; And as they fell, they fell--I saw them hurl A message far more eloquent than speech:
XII
_We that with song our pilgrimage beguile, With purple islands which a sunset bore, We, sunk upon the sacrilegious shore, May parley with oblivion awhile_.
XIII
I would not have you keep nor idly flaunt What may be gathered from the gracious land, But I would have you sow with sleepless hand The virtues that will balance your account.
XIV
The days are dressing all of us in white, For him who will suspend us in a row. But for the sun there is no death. I know The centuries are morsels of the night.
XV
A deed magnanimous, a noble thought Are as the music singing thro' the years When surly Time the tyrant domineers Against the lute whereoutof it was wrought.
XVI
Now to the Master of the World resign Whatever touches you, what is prepared, For many sons of wisdom are ensnared And many fools in happiness recline.
XVII
Long have I tarried where the waters roll From undeciphered caverns of the main, And I have searched, and I have searched in vain, Where I could drown the sorrows of my soul.
XVIII
If I have harboured love within my breast, 'Twas for my comrades of the dusty day, Who with me watched the loitering stars at play, Who bore the burden of the same unrest.
XIX
For once the witcheries a maiden flung-- Then afterwards I knew she was the bride Of Death; and as he came, so tender-eyed, I--I rebuked him roundly, being young.
XX
Yet if all things that vanish in their noon Are but the part of some eternal scheme, Of what the nightingale may chance to dream Or what the lotus murmurs to the moon!
XXI
Have I not heard sagacious ones repeat An irresistibly grim argument: That we for all our blustering content Are as the silent shadows at our feet.
XXII
Aye, when the torch is low and we prepare Beyond the notes of revelry to pass-- Old Silence will keep watch upon the grass, The solemn shadows will assemble there.
XXIII
No Sultan at his pleasure shall erect A dwelling less obedient to decay Than I, whom all the mysteries obey, Build with the twilight for an architect.
XXIV
Dark leans to dark! the passions of a man Are twined about all transitory things, For verily the child of wisdom clings More unto dreamland than Arabistan.
XXV
Death leans to death! nor shall your vigilance Prevent him from whate'er he would possess, Nor, brother, shall unfilial peevishness Prevent you from the grand inheritance.
XXVI
Farewell, my soul!--bird in the narrow jail Who cannot sing. The door is opened! Fly! Ah, soon you stop, and looking down you cry The saddest song of all, poor nightingale.
XXVII
Our fortune is like mariners to float Amid the perils of dim waterways; Shall then our seamanship have aught of praise If the great anchor drags behind the boat?
XXVIII
Ah! let the burial of yesterday, Of yesterday be ruthlessly decreed, And, if you will, refuse the mourner's reed, And, if you will, plant cypress in the way.
XXIX
As little shall it serve you in the fight If you remonstrate with the storming seas, As if you querulously sigh to these Of some imagined haven of delight.
XXX
Steed of my soul! when you and I were young We lived to cleave as arrows thro' the night,-- Now there is ta'en from me the last of light, And wheresoe'er I gaze a veil is hung.
XXXI
No longer as a wreck shall I be hurled Where beacons lure the fascinated helm, For I have been admitted to the realm Of darkness that encompasses the world.
XXXII
Man has been thought superior to the swarm Of ruminating cows, of witless foals Who, crouching when the voice of thunder rolls, Are banqueted upon a thunderstorm.
XXXIII
But shall the fearing eyes of humankind Have peeped beyond the curtain and excel The boldness of a wondering gazelle Or of a bird imprisoned in the wind?
XXXIV
Ah! never may we hope to win release Before we that unripeness overthrow,-- So must the corn in agitation grow Before the sickle sings the songs of peace.
XXXV
Lo! there are many ways and many traps And many guides, and which of them is lord? For verily Mahomet has the sword, And he may have the truth--perhaps! _perhaps!_
XXXVI
Now this religion happens to prevail Until by that religion overthrown,-- Because men dare not live with men alone, But always with another fairy-tale.
XXXVII
Religion is a charming girl, I say; But over this poor threshold will not pass, For I may not unveil her, and alas! The bridal gift I can't afford to pay.
XXXVIII
I have imagined that our welfare is Required to rise triumphant from defeat; And so the musk, which as the more you beat, Gives ever more delightful fragrancies.
XXXIX
For as a gate of sorrow-land unbars The region of unfaltering delight, So may you gather from the fields of night That harvest of diviner thought, the stars.
XL
Send into banishment whatever blows Across the waves of your tempestuous heart; Let every wish save Allah's wish depart, And you will have ineffable repose.
XLI
My faith it is that all the wanton pack Of living shall be--hush, poor heart!--withdrawn, As even to the camel comes a dawn Without a burden for his wounded back.
XLII
If there should be some truth in what they teach Of unrelenting Monkar and Nakyr, Before whose throne all buried men appear-- Then give me to the vultures, I beseech.
XLIII
Some yellow sand all hunger shall assuage And for my thirst no cloud have need to roll, And ah! the drooping bird which is my soul No longer shall be prisoned in the cage.
XLIV
Life is a flame that flickers in the wind, A bird that crouches in the fowler's net-- Nor may between her flutterings forget That hour the dreams of youth were unconfined.
XLV
There was a time when I was fain to guess The riddles of our life, when I would soar Against the cruel secrets of the door, So that I fell to deeper loneliness.
XLVI
One is behind the draperies of life, One who will tear these tanglements away-- No dark assassin, for the dawn of day Leaps out, as leapeth laughter, from the knife.
XLVII
If you will do some deed before you die, Remember not this caravan of death, But have belief that every little breath Will stay with you for an eternity.
XLVIII
Astrologers!--give ear to what they say! "The stars be words; they float on heaven's breath And faithfully reveal the days of death, And surely will reveal that longer day."
XLIX
I shook the trees of knowledge. Ah! the fruit Was fair upon the bleakness of the soil. I filled a hundred vessels with my spoil, And then I rested from the grand pursuit.
L
Alas! I took me servants: I was proud Of prose and of the neat, the cunning rhyme, But all their inclination was the crime Of scattering my treasure to the crowd.
LI
And yet--and yet this very seed I throw May rise aloft, a brother of the bird, Uncaring if his melodies are heard-- Or shall I not hear anything below?
LII
The glazier out of sounding Erzerûm, Frequented us and softly would conspire Upon our broken glass with blue-red fire, As one might lift a pale thing from the tomb.
LIII
He was the glazier out of Erzerûm, Whose wizardry would make the children cry-- There will be no such wizardry when I Am broken by the chariot-wheels of Doom.
LIV
The chariot-wheels of Doom! Now, hear them roll Across the desert and the noisy mart, Across the silent places of your heart-- Smile on the driver you will not cajole.
LV
I never look upon the placid plain But I must think of those who lived before And gave their quantities of sweat and gore, And went and will not travel back again.
LVI
Aye! verily, the fields of blandishment Where shepherds meditate among their cattle, Those are the direst of the fields of battle, For in the victor's train there is no tent.
LVII