Chapter 3

Where are the doctors who were nobly fired And loved their toil because we ventured not, Who spent their lives in searching for the spot To which the generations have retired?

LVIII

"Great is your soul,"--these are the words they preach,-- "It passes from your framework to the frame Of others, and upon this road of shame Turns purer and more pure."--Oh, let them teach!

LIX

I look on men as I would look on trees, That may be writing in the purple dome Romantic lines of black, and are at home Where lie the little garden hostelries.

LX

Live well! Be wary of this life, I say; Do not o'erload yourself with righteousness. Behold! the sword we polish in excess, We gradually polish it away.

LXI

God who created metal is the same Who will devour it. As the warriors ride With iron horses and with iron pride-- Come, let us laugh into the merry flame.

LXII

But for the grandest flame our God prepares The breast of man, which is the grandest urn; Yet is that flame so powerless to burn Those butterflies, the swarm of little cares.

LXIII

And if you find a solitary sage Who teaches what is truth--ah, then you find The lord of men, the guardian of the wind, The victor of all armies and of age.

LXIV

See that procession passing down the street, The black and white procession of the days-- Far better dance along and bawl your praise Than if you follow with unwilling feet.

LXV

But in the noisy ranks you will forget What is the flag. Oh, comrade, fall aside And think a little moment of the pride Of yonder sun, think of the twilight's net.

LXVI

The songs we fashion from our new delight Are echoes. When the first of men sang out, He shuddered, hearing not alone the shout Of hills but of the peoples in the night.

LXVII

And all the marvels that our eyes behold Are pictures. There has happened some event For each of them, and this they represent-- Our lives are like a tale that has been told.

LXVIII

There is a palace, and the ruined wall Divides the sand, a very home of tears, And where love whispered of a thousand years The silken-footed caterpillars crawl.

LXIX

And where the Prince commanded, now the shriek Of wind is flying through the court of state: "Here," it proclaims, "there dwelt a potentate Who could not hear the sobbing of the weak."

LXX

Beneath our palaces the corner-stone Is quaking. What of noble we possess, In love or courage or in tenderness, Can rise from our infirmities alone.

LXXI

We suffer--that we know, and that is all Our knowledge. If we recklessly should strain To sweep aside the solid rocks of pain, Then would the domes of love and courage fall.

LXXII

But there is one who trembles at the touch Of sorrow less than all of you, for he Has got the care of no big treasury, And with regard to wits not overmuch.

LXXIII

I think our world is not a place of rest, But where a man may take his little ease, Until the landlord whom he never sees Gives that apartment to another guest.

LXXIV

Say that you come to life as 'twere a feast, Prepared to pay whatever is the bill Of death or tears or--surely, friend, you will Not shrink at death, which is among the least?

LXXV

Rise up against your troubles, cast away What is too great for mortal man to bear. But seize no foolish arms against the share Which you the piteous mortal have to pay.

LXXVI

Be gracious to the King. You cannot feign That nobody was tyrant, that the sword Of justice always gave the just award Before these Ghassanites began to reign.

LXXVII

You cultivate the ranks of golden grain, He cultivates the cavaliers. They go With him careering on some other foe, And your battalions will be staunch again.

LXXVIII

The good law and the bad law disappear Below the flood of custom, or they float And, like the wonderful Sar'aby coat, They captivate us for a little year.

LXXIX

God pities him who pities. Ah, pursue No longer now the children of the wood; Or have you not, poor huntsman, understood That somebody is overtaking you?

LXXX

God is above. We never shall attain Our liberty from hands that overshroud; Or can we shake aside this heavy cloud More than a slave can shake aside the chain?

LXXXI

"There is no God save Allah!"--that is true, Nor is there any prophet save the mind Of man who wanders through the dark to find The Paradise that is in me and you.

LXXXII

The rolling, ever-rolling years of time Are as a diwan of Arabian song; The poet, headstrong and supremely strong, Refuses to repeat a single rhyme.

LXXXIII

An archer took an arrow in his hand; So fair he sent it singing to the sky That he brought justice down from--ah, so high! He was an archer in the morning land.

LXXXIV

The man who shot his arrow from the west Made empty roads of air; yet have I thought Our life was happier until we brought This cold one of the skies to rule the nest.

LXXXV

Run! follow, follow happiness, the maid Whose laughter is the laughing waterfall; Run! call to her--but if no maiden call, 'Tis something to have loved the flying shade.

LXXXVI

You strut in piety the while you take That pilgrimage to Mecca. Now beware, For starving relatives befoul the air, And curse, O fool, the threshold you forsake.

LXXXVII

How man is made! He staggers at the voice, The little voice that leads you to the land Of virtue; but, on hearing the command To lead a giant army, will rejoice.

LXXXVIII

Behold the cup whereon your slave has trod; That is what every cup is falling to. Your slave--remember that he lives by you, While in the form of him we bow to God.

LXXXIX

The lowliest of the people is the lord Who knows not where each day to make his bed, Whose crown is kept upon the royal head By that poor naked minister, the sword.

XC

Which is the tyrant? say you. Well, 'tis he That has the vine-leaf strewn among his hair And will deliver countries to the care Of courtesans--but I am vague, you see.

XCI

The dwellers of the city will oppress Your days: the lion, a fight-thirsty fool, The fox who wears the robe of men that rule-- So run with me towards the wilderness.

XCII

Our wilderness will be the laughing land, Where nuts are hung for us, where nodding peas Are wild enough to press about our knees, And water fills the hollow of our hand.

XCIII

My village is the loneliness, and I Am as the travellers through the Syrian sand, That for a moment see the warning hand Of one who breasted up the rock, their spy.

XCIV

Where is the valiance of the folk who sing These valiant stories of the world to come? Which they describe, forsooth! as if it swum In air and anchored with a yard of string.

XCV

Two merchantmen decided they would battle, To prove at last who sold the finest wares; And while Mahomet shrieked his call to prayers, The true Messiah waved his wooden rattle.

XCVI

Perchance the world is nothing, is a dream, And every noise the dreamland people say We sedulously note, and we and they May be the shadows flung by what we seem.

XCVII

Zohair the poet sang of loveliness Which is the flight of things. Oh, meditate Upon the sorrows of our earthly state, For what is lovely we may not possess.

XCVIII

Heigho! the splendid air is full of wings, And they will take us to the--friend, be wise For if you navigate among the skies You too may reach the subterranean kings.

XCIX

Now fear the rose! You travel to the gloom Of which the roses sing and sing so fair, And, but for them, you'd have a certain share In life: your name be read upon the tomb.

C

There is a tower of silence, and the bell Moves up--another man is made to be. For certain years they move in company, But you, when fails your song do fail as well.

CI

No sword will summon Death, and he will stay For neither helm nor shield his falling rod. We are the crooked alphabet of God, And He will read us ere he wipes away.

CII

How strange that we, perambulating dust, Should be the vessels of eternal fire, That such unfading passion of desire Should be within our fading bodies thrust.

CIII

_Deep in a silent chamber of the rose There was a fattened worm. He looked around, Espied a relative and spoke at him: It seems to me this world is very good_.

CIV

_A most unlovely world, said brother worm, For all of us are piteous prisoners. And if, declared the first, your thought is true, And this a prison be, melikes it well_.

CV

_So well that I shall weave a song of praise And thankfulness because the world was wrought For us and with such providential care-- My brother, I will shame you into singing_.

CVI

_Then, cried the second, I shall raise a voice And see what poor apologies are made. And so they sang, these two, for many days, And while they sang the rose was beautiful_.

CVII

_But this affected not the songful ones, And evermore in beauty lived the rose. And when the worms were old and wiser too, They fell to silence and humility_.

CVIII

A night of silence! 'Twas the swinging sea And this our world of darkness. And the twain Rolled on below the stars; they flung a chain Around the silences which are in me.

CIX

The shadows come, and they will come to bless Their brother and his dwelling and his fame, When I shall soil no more with any blame Or any praise the silence I possess.

APPENDIX

ON THE NAME ABU'L-ALA

Arab names have always been a stumbling-block, and centuries ago there was a treatise written which was called "The Tearing of the Veil from before Names and Patronymics." Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Jarit al-Misri is a fair example of the nomenclature; here we have the patronymic (Abu Bakr--father of Bakr), the personal name (Ahmad), the surname (ibn Jarit--son of Jarit), and the ethnic name (al-Misri--native of Egypt). In addition, they made use of fancy names if they were poets (such as Ssorrdorr, the sack of pearls, who died in the year 1072), names connoting kindred, habitation (such as Ahmad al-Maidani, the great collector of proverbs, who lived near the Maidan, the race-course of Naisapur), faith or trade or personal defects (such as a caliph who was called the father of flies, since on account of his offensive breath no fly would rest upon his lip), and finally they gave each other names of honour (such as sword of the empire, helper of the empire, etc.). Then the caliph gave, as a distinction, double titles and, when these became too common, triple titles. ("In this way," says al-Biruni, "the matter is opposed to sense and clumsy to the last degree, so that a man who says the titles is fatigued when he has scarcely started and he runs the risk of being late for prayer.") . . . The patronymic was, of all of these, the most in favour. At first it was assumed when the eldest son was born; when Bakr came into the world his father took the name of Abu Bakr, and acquired a new importance. This was not by any means peculiar to the Arabs: "O Queen," says Das, a king of Indian folk-song, "O Queen, the name of childless has departed from me." When the Arab had no son, he used an honorific patronymic (such as Abu'l-Ala, father of excellence, or Abu'l-Feda, father of redemption). At times this manufactured patronymic was a thing of mockery, more or less gentle (such as a companion of the Prophet who was fond of cats, and was entitled "father of the cat"). The prevalence among the Arabs of the patronymic is immediately noticed, (a camel is the father of Job; a strongly built person is the father of the locust; a licentious person is the father of the night; and there are multitudes of such formations). . . . With regard to surnames, it was not the custom always for them to denote that so-and-so was the son of his father's family. "Who is your father?" says an Arab to the mule, and he replies, "The horse is my maternal uncle." So there are some people who, for shame, prefer that we should think of them as members of their mother's family. . . .

The following additional quatrains may be quoted:

Unasking have we come,--too late, too soon Unasking from this plot of earth are sent. But we, the sons of noble discontent, Use half our lives in asking for the moon.

("We all sorely complain," says Seneca, "of the shortness of time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives are either spent in doing nothing at all or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.")

So then your hand has guarded me! Be blessed, And, if you like such reading, read, I pray, Through Moses' book, or credit them who say That old Isaiah's hand is far the best.

Some day, some day the potter shall return Into the dust. O potter, will you make An earth which I would not refuse to take, Or such unpleasant earth as you would spurn?

Then out of that--men swear with godly skill-- Perchance another potter may devise Another pot, a piece of merchandise Which they can love and break, if so they will.

And from a resting-place you may be hurled And from a score of countries may be thrust-- Poor brother, you the freeman of the dust, Like any slave are flung about the world.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala, by Henry Baerlein