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Title: The Festival of Spring - from the Divan of Jelaleddin
Author: Maulana Jal?l al-D?n R?m?
Language: English
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transliteration have been retained.
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the Table of Contents.
The Festival of Spring
PUBLISHED BY
JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW,
Publishers to the University.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.
_New York_, _The Macmillan Co._
_London_, _Simpkin, Hamilton and Co._
_Cambridge_, _Macmillan and Bowes_.
_Edinburgh_, _Douglas and Foulis_.
MCMIII.
The Festival of Spring
from
The Díván of Jeláleddín
Rendered in English Gazels after Rückert's Versions
_With an Introduction
And a Criticism of the Rubáiyát of
Omar Khayyám_
By
William Hastie, D.D.
Professor of Divinity, University of Glasgow
Glasgow
James MacLehose and Sons
Publishers to the University
1903
'In Depth of Conception, as well as in Loftiness
of Flight and Sublimity of Language, JELÁLEDDÍN
surpasses all the Poets of the East.'
PROFESSOR HERMANN ETHÉ.
'The greatest Mystical Poet of any Age.'
REYNOLD A. NICHOLSON.
'And all the Breeze of Fancy blows,
And every Dew-drop paints a bow,
The wizard Lightnings deeply glow,
And every Thought breaks out a Rose.'
TENNYSON.
This Book with its Sincere
Utterances of Love and Friendship
towards the Highest
is dedicated to
William A. Sanderson, Esq.
Byethorne, Galashiels
My ever faithful Friend
in Adversity, as in Prosperity
Old Songs are sweetest
Old Friends are best
Note
The current, popular spelling of Persian Names and Words has been
generally adopted in the following pages, in order to avoid any
appearance of pedantry. The _Turkish_ forms have occasionally been
preferred when in place, _e.g._ _Devlet_ for _Daulat_, and _Mevlānā_ for
_Maulānā_. The exact transliteration of the Persian—such as
Jalálu-'d-Din, Shams-ud-Din, Umar, G̲h̲asal, Díwán—will be found in the
foot-note references to more learned Works.
Contents
Introduction
Jeláleddín as a Persian Poet—Judgments of Scholars and Experts in
Persian Literature since Sir W. Jones—The Philosophical and
Theological Interest—Hegel—Tholuck—The Poetical Form—The
Gazel—The Divan—Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyám—Burns—Browning—Keats's
Nightingale—Coleridge echoes the Faith of Jeláleddín.
Fifty Gazels of Jeláleddín
PAGE
I. Light, 1
II. Death and Life, 2
III. Invocation, 3
IV. Faith, 4
V. Dawn, 5
VI. Allah Hu, 6
VII. Spring, 7
VIII. Spring's Festival, 8
IX. Dependence, 9
X. Mystical Union, 10
XI. Identity, 12
XII. Confession, 13
XIII. Discordia Concors, 14
XIV. Renovation, 15
XV. Revolving in Mystic Dance, 16
XVI. The Soul in All, 17
XVII. Responsibility, 18
XVIII. Action, 19
XIX. Bondage, 20
XX. Love's Freedom, 21
XXI. In My Heart, 22
XXII. Not Deaf to Love, 23
XXIII. Assimilation, 24
XXIV. Cleanliness, 25
XXV. Where is He? 26
XXVI. Love's Slavery, 27
XXVII. Psyche in Tears, 28
XXVIII. Substitutional, 29
XXIX. God's Throne, 30
XXX. The Lion of God, 31
XXXI. Self-Realisation, 33
XXXII. Thy Hand, 34
XXXIII. The Priests, 35
XXXIV. The Pilgrims, 36
XXXV. Many Faiths, One Lord, 37
XXXVI. Love Absolute, 38
XXXVII. Renunciation, 39
XXXVIII. All Fulness, 40
XXXIX. Friendship, 41
XL. The Friend Supreme, 42
XLI. Immortality, 44
XLII. The First and Last, 45
XLIII. Mystic Love Dance, 46
XLIV. Dream Fear, 47
XLV. The Cry of Love, 48
XLVI. Night Thought, 49
XLVII. Up out of Night, 50
XLVIII. All One, 52
XLIX. O Wake in Me, 53
L. Jeláleddín, 55
Notes
A. Sir William Jones on the Mystical Poetry of the Persians. 57
B. Hegel on the Character of the Persian Lyrical Poetry. 59
C. Von Hammer's Account of Omar Khayyám. 61
Introduction
I.
Jeláleddín Rúmí (A.D. 1207-1273) is now universally recognised by 'those
who know,' as the greatest of the Persian Mystical Poets. This
supremacy, in his own sphere, has been unanimously accorded to him for
more than six centuries, by unnumbered myriads of his own disciples and
followers in the Oriental World, who have been wrapt in devoutest
admiration of the great Master to whom they have owed the highest joy
and inspiration of their spiritual life. And at last, in our own Western
World, the great Persian scholars of Europe, looking at him without
personal or national bias, and through the clear, cold light of the new
time, have come more and more, as with one voice, to join in this chorus
of praise. His most appreciative recent editor and interpreter in
England, in presenting a few leaves plucked with reverent hand from what
he calls Jeláleddín's 'wreath of imperishable Lyric Song,' offers his
own careful and conscientious work to us, as a contribution 'to a better
appreciation of _the greatest mystical poet of any age_.' And with this
designation, as summing up the judgment of a capable expert and
critic—strange as it may sound—we venture, in all deference and
sincerity, to agree. Jeláleddín is now rising upon our literary horizon
in all his native Splendour—his name appropriately signifying 'The
Splendour of the Faith'—as at once the Dante, the St. Bernard, the
Spenser, the Milton, the Angelus Silesius, and the Novalis of the
Orient. As a religious Lyrical Poet his mellifluous music, his variety
of strain, his captivating charm of words, his purity of feeling, his
joyous faith, and his elevation of thought, have never been surpassed in
their own kind. Taking what Matthew Arnold has called 'the lyrical cry'
even in its widest range, it would be doing no one wrong—although it
dare hardly be done as yet—to rank Jeláleddín, when he comes fully
before us 'with all his singing robes about him,' with the very
highest—with Shakespeare, with Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley, and
with Goethe and Heine! He is certainly one of the most fertile poets of
Nature among the Lyrical Singers of all time, and the most exuberant, if
not also the most spiritual, Hymnist the world outside of Christendom
has yet produced.
This estimate, however shaded or qualified, cannot but appear at first
strangely exaggerated, and out of all just proportion, to those who
mayhap read the name of Jeláleddín now for the first time. Let us
listen, then, to the greatest students of Persian Poetry in the critical
Nineteenth Century, the judges who have highest authority on the
subject, and who have the best right to pronounce judgment on
Jeláleddín. And let us hear in the first place, as is his due, the most
learned Historian of Persian Poetry in the Nineteenth Century, who with
indefatigable industry and completest knowledge has adorned his pages
with Extracts from no less than Two Hundred of Persia's greatest Poets.
Joseph von Hammer, the great Austrian Orientalist (known later as Baron
Von Hammer-Purgstall and as the Historian of Arabic Literature in seven
immense volumes, containing Accounts of nearly ten thousand Authors)
says:—
'Jeláleddín Rumi is the greatest Mystical Poet of the East, the Oracle
of the Sofis, the Nightingale of the contemplative life, the Author of
the Mesnevi (a celebrated double-rhymed ascetic poem), and the Founder
of the Mevlevi, the most famous Order of Mystical Dervishes. As Founder
of this Order, as the Legislator of the Contemplative Life, and as the
Interpreter of Heavenly Mysteries, he is highly revered. And as such he
has to be estimated by quite a different standard from that which
applies to those Poets whose inspiration has not soared, like his, to
the Vision of Divine things, to the primal Fountain of Love and Light.
He cannot properly be compared either with Firdusi, the greatest of the
Persian Epic Poets, nor with Nizami, the greatest of the Romantic
Poets, nor with Saadi, the first of the moral Didactic Poets, nor with
Hafiz, the chiefest of the erotic Lyrical Poets; for all these won the
Palm of Poetry in entirely different fields from his. The only two
great Poets of his kind, with whom a comparison can be in place,
Senayi, the Author of the Mystical 'Flower Garden,' and Attar, the
Author of the Mystical 'Bird Dialogues.' But both these works stand, as
regards poetic merit, far below the Mesnevi, which is the Text Book of
all The Sofis, from the banks of the Ganges to the shores of the
Bosphorus. The Collection of Jeláleddín's 'Lyrical Poems'—his DIVAN,
properly so called—'is regarded by them as of still higher value; it is
practically the Law Book and the Ritual of all these Mystics. These
outbursts of the highest inspiration of its kind deserve to be more
closely considered, as it is from them that we see shining forth as in
clear splendour the essence of the Oriental Mysticism, the cardinal
Doctrine that All is One—the view of the ultimate Unity of all
Being—and giving with it Direction and Guidance to the highest goal of
Perfection by the contemplative Way of Divine Love. On the wings of the
highest religious enthusiasm, the Sofi, rising above all the outward
forms of positive Religions, adores the Eternal Being, in the
completest abstraction from all that is sensuous and earthly, as the
purest Source of Eternal Light. Mevláná Jeláleddín thus soars, not only
like other Lyrical Poets, such as Hafiz, over Suns and Moons, but even
above Space and Time, above the world of Creation and Fate, above the
Original Contract of Predestination, and beyond the Last Judgment, into
the Infinite, where in Eternal Adoration he melts into One with the
Eternal Being, and infinitely loving, becomes One with the Infinite
Love—ever forgetting himself and having only the great All in his
view.'[1]
Thus far the learned Von Hammer. But let us also hear the
judgment of the East itself, of which this is only a Western
echo, as it may be gathered from Devletshah, the greatest
native biographer—the Dr. Johnson we may appropriately say—of
the Persian Poets. Of Jeláleddín, he says:—
'His pure Heart is filled with Divine Mysteries, and through his
eradiating Soul streams the Infinite Light. His View of the World leads
the thirsty in the Vale of the Contemplative Life to the refreshing
Fountain of Knowledge; and his Guidance leads those who have wandered
in the Wilderness of Ignorance into the Gardens where Truth is really
known. He makes plain to the Pilgrim the Secrets of the Way of Unity,
and unveils the Mysteries of the Path of Eternal Truth:
As when the foaming Sea high swells in Wave upon Wave,
It casts out Pearls upon Pearls on every Shore they lave.'
And to cite only one Turkish Authority—for the Turks claim Jeláleddín as
their own, although a Persian of royal race, born at Balkh, old Bactra,
on the ground of his having sung and died at Qoniya, in Asia Minor (the
Iconium of Paul and Barnabas and Timothy and St. Thecla), whence he was
called Rumi 'the Roman,' usually rendered 'the Greek,' as wonning within
the confines of old Oriental Rome. This is how Fehîm Efendi, the Turkish
Historian of the Persian Literature, himself a Poet, begins his Sketch
of the Life of the great poetic Mystagogue:—
'As the ideal of Searchers after Truth here below, as the pattern of
the Pure, the Mevlana is honoured by great and small among the people,
by the aristocrat and the common man. In all circles his words are held
in high honour; among all the wise his knowledge is greatly esteemed;
and no pen has had the power to praise him, and to celebrate his
excellence worthily, or to describe it in fitting terms.
And should the fancy hold it can
His praise completely reach;
Mevlana's praise it ne'er shall scan—
How say it then in speech?'
Rosen, who gives this quotation, and an excellent rhymed German
translation of part of the Mesnevi, refers to that poem as not only 'one
of the most celebrated productions of the Persian Mysticism, but as
being regarded by many Mohammedans as almost equal in holiness to the
Koran and the Sunna.' Being attached, at the time he wrote, to the
German Embassy at Constantinople, Rosen also mentions that not only did
the educated Oriental regard the Mesnevi as the most perfect Book of
Edification, which when its contents were received into his mind and
heart, made him certain of Salvation; but that even the poor Persian
retailers of the products of their home industries, on the streets,
could recite with enthusiasm long passages from the poems of Jeláleddín.
We believe that this holds true to-day, more or less, of the whole
Mohammedan world.[2]
But coming to more familiar names, we might gather a whole cloud of the
most approved witnesses in this connection. Thus Sir William Jones, the
first great Anglo-Indian Scholar, the Columbus of the new Old World of
Sanskrit and Persian Literature, enters with wonderful sympathy and
insight into possession of the Persian and Hindu Mystical Poetry; he
refers to their great Maulavi, and his astonishing work, _The Mesnevi_;
and he translates the celebrated opening passage in rhyming couplets
which would not have been unworthy of Pope himself.[3] Sir William Jones
did not, indeed, touch Jeláleddín's Lyrics, but he rendered some
precious morsels of Hafiz, 'Odes,' as they are called, both in English
and French, in a way that made young European students and poets, like
Herder and Goethe, turn again to the East with yearning expectant eyes.
Similar testimony might be adduced from Henry Thomas Colebrooke, one of
the very greatest of the successors of Sir W. Jones. The chief Historian
of Persia, and the best informed Persian scholar of his day, Sir John
Malcolm (of Langholm), if less sympathetic than Sir W. Jones in his
painstaking account of the Persian Mystics, gives likewise the first
place to Jeláleddín.[4] And then much more definitely Sir Gore Ouseley,
the first English Biographer of the Persian Poets, gives Jeláleddín due
recognition in connection with the unrivalled Mesnevi.[5] The Journal of
the Asiatic Society, an ever valuable Magazine of Oriental learning, and
the parent of many others of its kind, has been enriched by the
contributions of many enthusiastic English scholars following in the
footsteps of Sir W. Jones, and it contains the earliest fragments of
English translations of Jeláleddín.[6] Robert Alfred Vaughan, in his
_Hours with the Mystics_, 1856, a popular, sympathetic, and still
attractive work, appreciates Jeláleddín, and compares him with Angelus
Silesius and Emerson, but all his knowledge of the Persian Mystic was
derived from Tholuck and Sir W. Jones. At last competent scholars began
to deal worthily with Jelál's poetry in English. Sir James W. Redhouse
has translated the First Book of the Mesnevi in rhyming couplets, with
the utmost fidelity and care; and another distinguished Persian scholar,
Mr. Whinfield, the most faithful English translator of Omar Khayyám, has
given an abridged version of the whole immense work, which in the
Persian original contains about 70,000 lines.[7] The Mesnevi has thus
come now to be pretty well known by English readers interested in the
subject; and in the last edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_,
Professor Hermann Ethé, an unquestionable authority, in his valuable
Articles on Persian Literature and Jeláleddín Rumi, sums him up as 'the
_greatest_ Pantheistic Writer of _all_ ages,' and speaks of 'his
_matchless_ Odes in which he soars on the wings of a genuine enthusiasm,
high over Earth and Heaven, up to the Throne of Almighty God.' Be it
noted, in passing, that it is at least remarkable how two such different
writers as the Turkish Devlet Shah and the learned German Orientalist
should both write of Jeláleddín in terms that undesignedly, but
irresistibly, recall by their very superlativeness, the famous lines of
Dr. Johnson on Shakespeare:—
'Each change of many-coloured Life he drew,
Exhausted Worlds and then imagin'd new;
Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.'
All this makes it now intelligible that the late lamented Editor of the
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, Dr. W. Robertson Smith, when Professor of
Arabic at Cambridge, with the fine insight of the far-seeing scholar,
should have directed the attention of a young, enthusiastic student to
the 'Lyrical Poetry of Jeláleddín Rumi'; and it is to the loyal devotion
of this young scholar that we owe the first appearance from an English
Press of a Volume of forty-eight 'Selected Poems' of Jeláleddín, in a
critical Persian Text and with accurate and elegant prose renderings.[8]
Mr. Reynold A. Nicholson has thus established a right to pronounce
judgment on the merits of Jeláleddín, and we now listen to him with
deference, and no longer with astonishment, when he deliberately
characterises him as 'the _greatest_ Mystical Poet of _any_ Age.'
As the object of this Introduction is only to determine, in some
measure, the literary interest of the Lyrical Poetry—the Díván, as it is
technically called—of Jeláleddín, space need not be taken up by
narrating again what is traditionally known of his Life, and it is the
less necessary as excellent accounts are now easily accessible. Sir
James W. Redhouse gives in somewhat abridged translation El Eflākī's
interesting narrative, with its romantic wreath of legend, and its
quaint anecdotes and racy sayings. Mr. Nicholson furnishes an excellent
summary. Professor Hermann Ethé's notice in the Encycl. Brit. has been
already referred to, and reference may also be made to his
_Morgenländische Studien_, and his popular Lecture in the
Virchow-Holtzendorff Series, 1888, on 'The Mystical, Didactic, and
Lyrical Poetry, and the later Literature of the Persians,' with its fine
characterization, which we would fain have quoted. Rosen translates into
German the Biographical Sketches of Devletshah and Jāmi. Professor E. G.
Browne's recent 'Literary History of Persia,' which carries the subject
down to A.D. 1000, and is undoubtedly so far the best History of Persian
Literature yet produced, contains appreciative references to Jeláleddín,
with a masterly account of the Sufi Mysticism; and we look forward with
much interest to a comprehensive and judicial summing up of the great
Mystic Poet, by this high authority upon the whole subject.[9]
II.
The interest of the writer in Jeláleddín has been from the first, and
all through, philosophical and theological rather than specially
historical or textual. This interest was awakened in him by Hegel. In
early student days, when to him as to so many then, the Hegelian
Philosophy was the all in all of his thought, he was startled by the
unwonted enthusiasm with which the great thinker at the climax of his
severest exposition, paused to pay a warm tribute to 'the _excellent_
Jeláleddín,' when he came into view in the light of the Supreme Idea of
his own System.[10] This passage in Hegel, seems always to have
impressed the students of his own writings, and it has been frequently
referred to both by his German and English expounders. The greatest
speculative Thinker of the Nineteenth Century, seems to have felt a deep
satisfaction in recognising the affinity of the greatest speculative
Poet of the East to his own deepest thought, while at the same time
carefully distinguishing the clearer and higher form of his own
conception. Nay more, although parsimonious to the utmost of his space
and words, in this, the most condensed and compacted Text Book of
Philosophy written in any European language since Aristotle, the stern
German Dialectician in a comparatively long Foot Note, says he 'cannot
refrain' from quoting several passages from the Poet, in order that the
reader may get a clearer knowledge of his ideas; and he quotes them from
Rückert's Versions, to give, at the same time, some specimens of 'the
marvellous Art of the translation.' The Reader who is not acquainted
with German will find Hegel's words accurately translated by the late
Dr. W. Wallace, who also gives an English version of the passages quoted
from Rückert, in which he says he was 'kindly helped by Miss May
Kendall'—although Dr. Wallace and Miss May, rhyming in utter ignorance
of Persian Prosody, and consequently, like so many more, in the dark,
have entirely failed to catch the delicate play of the Gazels, so
faithfully reproduced by the tuneful Rückert.[11]
In another of Hegel's works—his valuable posthumous 'Lectures on the
Philosophy of Art'—he takes up the same subject from the æsthetic point
of view, and he deals with it again in a more popular, but in an
essentially identical, way.[12] As the former passage has now obtained
currency in our philosophical literature, it may be more useful, as well
as more relevant to these pages, to reproduce the latter, the fuller and
more intelligible, but hitherto untranslated, exposition. Hegel is here
dealing with the Symbolical Forms of Art, and in particular with the
symbolism of Sublimity, historically characteristic of Oriental Art,
which thus gives expression to the consciousness of absolute
subordination and the dependence of all that is individual and finite on
the Universal and the Infinite. In his comprehensive historical survey
Hegel, at this stage, finds occasion to deal with what he calls
'Pantheism in Art.' The profound thinker, with a vigorous grasp and
original view of the historic evolution, is here singularly lucid and
suggestive, as he delineates the Pantheistic Poetic Idea exhibited in
the lyrical forms of 1. Indian Poetry; 2. Mohammedan Poetry; 3. Christian
Mysticism. Very refreshing and sane is his representation of
Indian Poetry, at a time when the uncritical enthusiasm of the Schlegels
and other young Sanskrit Students, was carrying an unrestrained
admiration beyond all reasonable bounds. Hegel castigates this juvenile
weakness with a firm hand. He, too, has read the startling translations
of the Sakuntala and the Bhagavad Gita, and he knows something of the
Ramayana; but he is not dazzled or carried away. He recognises the
marvellous exuberance and profusion of the Indian imagination, but it is
all too fantastic as yet. While it is boundless, it is also formless,
and just so far is it lacking in true Beauty. Its Sublimity is confused,
chaotic, helpless; it ever struggles for a harmonious unity, for
spiritual mastery of the manifold and the overwhelming, which it never
attains. All this is truest insight, soundest criticism.—But a higher
stage is reached in the _Persian_ Poetry. Here the form of the Poet
becomes more adequate, more masterful, more refined. Beauty springing up
with Sublimity, is harmoniously wedded with it, and in one great Poet
the victory of Love is freely consummated; for—to paraphrase with
Tennyson—
'For all the past of Time reveals
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals,
Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact.'
But let us hear Hegel's own grave, well-weighed judgment, as he spoke it
in those days to his own Students at Berlin:
'In a higher and subjectively freer way, the Oriental Pantheism has
been developed in Mohammedanism, especially by the Persians. A special
relationship now comes in. The Poet longs to behold the Divine in all
things, and he actually does so behold it; but he also now surrenders
his own Self and gives himself up to it, while he at the same time in
the same degree grasps the Immanence of the Divine in his own inner
Being, when thus expanded and freed. And thereby there grows in him
that cheerful inwardness, that free joy, that abounding blessedness
which is peculiar to the Oriental, who in becoming liberated from his
own individual limitations, sinks forthwith into the Eternal and
Absolute, and recognises and feels in everything the Image and the
Presence of the Divine. Such a consciousness of being permeated by the
Divine and of a vivified, intoxicated life in God, borders on
Mysticism. Above all others JELÁLEDDÍN RUMI is to be celebrated in this
connection, of whose poetry Rückert has furnished us with some of the
finest specimens, in which, with his marvellous power of expression, he
even allows himself to play, in the most skilful and free manner, with
words and rhymes, as the Persians similarly do. Love to God, with whom
Man identifies his Self through the most unlimited self-surrender, and
Whom, as the One, he now beholds in all the realms of space, leads him
to refer and carry back all and everything to God; and this Love here
forms the centre which expands on all sides and into all regions.'[13]
Hegel thus deliberately gives Jeláleddín an eminent place not only among
the great Poets, but among the great Thinkers of the world. He is more
than satisfied with Rückert as a translator, and he is virtually at one
with Jeláleddín's principle of thought. His qualification is historical
rather than essential; the relation to Pantheism is the particular
limiting condition of Jeláleddín's stage of development and environment;
it is not a ground of reproach, nor of condemnation as more than
relatively untrue, or rather incomplete. And so Hegel is at pains to
vindicate the poet-thinker from the vulgar and unjust stigma commonly
implied in the ascription of Pantheism. This he does in his remarks on
the contributions to the subject by Dr. Tholuck, who became afterwards
the eminent evangelical theologian of Halle, but who was then just
entering on his distinguished career. Tholuck had quite a genius for
languages, and his first intention was to devote himself to Oriental
Philology. He prosecuted the study of Arabic, Persian and Turkish, with
great zeal and success under the distinguished Dietz; and in 1821, at
the age of twenty-two, he qualified as a University Teacher, by a
learned Latin Dissertation on 'Sufism, or the Pantheistic Theosophy of
the Persians.'[14] This remarkable exposition was at once recognised as
of real merit, and it is still valuable. Tholuck, who was a born poet
and had a rare breadth of literary appreciation, supplemented his work,
four years later, by a very interesting Anthology from the Persian
Mystical Poets in German verse, with an attractive introduction to the
whole subject.[15] With the profoundest admiration for Dr. Tholuck's
work as a theologian, and an unfading personal affection, kindled by
tender and memorable student contact with him in his old age, we yet
cannot dissent from Mr. Whinfield's critical judgment when he thus sums
up the value of these contributions: 'Tholuck was an indifferent Persian
Scholar, and many of his translations are wrong, but he grasped the
meaning of Sufism and its affinity to European mysticism much more
thoroughly than many who were far superior to him in mere verbal
scholarship.' Hegel, who was not a Persian scholar, is generous in his
recognition of Tholuck's Anthology, but he points out the weakness of
Tholuck's criticism, and shews in particular that the young theologian
is too perfunctory in his view of the subject generally, as merely
adopting the 'current chatter about Pantheism,' and hurling it as a
convenient term of reproach against the whole speculative thought of the
time. This shallow popular criticism, as Hegel puts it, quite
misunderstands the real principle of speculative Pantheism, confounds it
with a crude view of the world which immediately identifies the object
of sense with the Divine, but which no sane thinker ever really held,
and it is to be rejected emphatically when applied to Jeláleddín. For,
as he says, 'In the excellent Jeláleddín Rumi in particular we find the
unity of the soul with the One set forth, and that unity described as
Love; and this spiritual unity is an exaltation above the finite and
common, a transfiguration of the natural and spiritual in which the
externalism and transitoriness of nature is surmounted: in _this_
poetry, which soars over all that is external and sensuous, who would
recognise the prosaic ideas current about so-called Pantheism?' No;
Jelál is not to be tabooed, off-hand, and labelled merely as a Pantheist!
With Hegel's correction of Tholuck and his vindication of the
speculative standpoint of the Persian Poet, we are entirely agreed; but
Hegel is himself here not quite adequate. All students of philosophy
know that in this very relation has lain the chief ambiguity and
weakness of his own System, and it is reflected in his view of
Jeláleddín. With his dominating passion for systematising the evolution
of History and conforming it to a logical scheme of thought, he yet
fails to see—largely owing to the limitation of his material—how
practically modern and how spiritually personal Jelál really is. For,
after all, Jeláleddín is no mere idle dreamy mediaeval Mystic; he _is_
essentially a modern poet and thinker, and is _not_ to be pushed back
into the dim vagueness and impersonal materialism of ancient thought. He
has twelve centuries of Christian life and reflection behind him, with
all the dogmatic development of the ancient orthodox Church, on the one
hand; all the forms of Indian pantheistic and Greek freethought on the
other; and six centuries of austere restraining Mohammedan Monotheism as
his central curb and check—and well and clearly he knows them all. He is
at once universally eclectic and originally constructive, and he moves
freely and joyously with a larger insight all his own. The East and the
West meet in him again, more richly than they have done in any other for
centuries, and he binds them into a new, happy harmony, the 'heavenly
harmony' of poesy. He is a true Seer, like his own ancient Zarathustra,
like Lao-tse, like Buddha, and much more akin to Jesus, and Paul, and
John, than to the fierce, relentless, one-sided Prophet of Arabia, whose
barren religion he redeems from its mechanical inhumanity and quickens
with the breath of a purer and Diviner love. His intellectual kinship is
with Plato and the speculative Theologians of the Christian Church, and
with the deep dreamers who live in the highest vision and lose
themselves sweetly and gladly in God. He is the veritable Morning Star
of the new Day of the World, rising in pure brightness, afar in the
East—and after barbaric crusade and mad war, heralding, in a clearer and
sweeter Song of Divine Love, the triumph of the new time.
And the Nightingale thought, 'I have sung many songs,
But never a one so gay,
For he sings of what the world will be
When the years have died away'!
In the year of Jeláleddín's death Edward I. ascended the throne of
England, with the first faltering grasp of a mightier Empire; the boy
Dante was catching the gleam of strange Visions in the shining eyes of
the sweet-faced gentle maiden Beatrice; the mystic thrill that had run
through the Middle Age was pulsing in the youth of Meister Eckhart, and
preparing for Suso and Ruysbroek and Thomas à Kempis, through the
mellifluous Rhythm of St. Bernard which had been sung for a hundred
years; the Doctor Angelicus had all but summed up the system of
Christian Theology, the well-worn pen just trembling to its fall from
his wearied grasp; and the spirit of Martin Luther, whom of all
religious Reformers Jeláleddín most resembles, was already beginning to
breathe in William Occam and the free young thinkers of the time. Yes;
Jeláleddín has both a wider relationship and a more modern significance
than even Hegel has thought of.
And now we have surely cited Authorities enough to enable us to form at
least a preliminary judgment, fair, reasonably informed, and impartial,
concerning Jeláleddín's distinctive position and work as a Poet. We have
seen him thrice crowned—in the Realms of Poetry. Philosophy, and
Religion—by authoritative representatives, qualified kingmakers; and
hardly any one who now knows truly of him, will dispute his right to be
ranked as one of 'the great of old! The dead but sceptred sovrans who
still rule our spirits from their urns.' His royal Title was proclaimed
long ago in the musical name most aptly bestowed upon him when he lived
and sang, and by those who knew him best: JELÁLEDDÍN, which we have
already rendered literally as 'The Splendour of the Faith,' but which we
prefer now to reproduce in its proper English equivalent as 'The Glory
of Religion.' This designation at once strikingly expresses the Secret
of his Power, the Consecration of his Genius, and the essence and end of
his Humanity. To him Religion was all in all; it was the very
Life-breath of his Soul; the Home and Joy of his Heart; the be-all and
end-all of his Will. Of but very few others of the Sons of Men can this
be said; of only One can it be said in a higher degree than of
Jeláleddín, as he himself knew and confessed. He too 'sought for the
healing Hand of Jesus,' and it purged his inner sight and enabled him to
see all the world again, lying bright and beautiful, in the Light and
Love of God. And moved by that all-compelling Law whose 'seat is the
Bosom of God' and whose 'voice is the Harmony of the world,' he burst
spontaneously into song, and the keynote of all his singing—exultant,
jubilant, triumphant—was ever the living, loving God, 'Him first, Him
last, Him without end.' Religion was the golden Thread on which, all his
silvery poetic Pearls were strung, and he flung them around him in his
own generous, selfless joy, with the most lavish hand. They seem to have
cost him no effort of search or toil. Much more than Spinoza or Novalis
was he a 'God-intoxicated man'; the prophetic fire burned in his soul,
without consuming it and it must out in 'thoughts that breathe and words
that burn.' And this is still our precious inheritance from him to-day,
which we will do well to appreciate and cherish anew in this cold,
heartless, irreligious, prosaic time. Let his ringing voice then be
reverently heard even through these few, faint, far-off re-echoings of
his own soul-stirring elevating strains; for the burden of all he sings,
in endless variation of note and tune, his one theme as he himself
caught it direct from the melody of Nature and of Man, is THE GLORY OF
RELIGION!
This very general Introduction to the subject-matter of Jelál's Lyrics
must here suffice, as our immediate object is merely to present some
specimens of them in a form at once popular and generally intelligible.
But the detail of the subject in its historical, philosophical and
theological bearings, which would only be confusing here, is reserved
for some subsequent discussion. Sir William Jones gave a first popular
Epitome of the Mystical System of the Persian Poets, which in its own
way has never been surpassed (see Note A), although the subject has been
much more profoundly studied and elucidated since his time. A competent
discussion of the system of 'the greatest Sufic poet of Persia' (Ethé),
would be a valuable contribution to our contemporary Philosophy of
Religion. Mr. Nicholson has concisely sketched the parallelism between
the doctrines of Jeláleddín and Plotinus, but we must go further and
even deeper than Plotinus in order to reach the root of the whole
matter. Professor Browne is very helpful, and gives the best Literature,
as also does Hughes in his most interesting illustrated Articles; Kremer
is invaluable, as also are Professor Palmer on the one hand, and the
recent translators and expounders of the early Iranian and Hindu
Religion and Philosophy on the other; Whinfield gives an able, lucid
Sketch.
III.
Looking now at the _poetical form_ of Jelál's Lyrics, it goes without
saying that it is distinctively Persian, and always eminently so in its
kind. The Persian Poets were truly 'makers'; they not only created most
of the nature-imagery still current in all modern poetry, but they
constructed new forms of rhythm and rhyme, in which they finely echoed
the sweetest melodies of nature and gave a richer and more expressive
music to human speech. Their fluent and flexible language, with its
natural wealth of resonant cadences and rhymes, furnished them with a
facile medium of expression, and the still richer Arabic readily lent
its copious resources at need. And the Persians were always rhyming, in
public and private, on great themes or small; a poetic people, ever
ready to recognise and honour sweet songsters; the readiest and wittiest
of 'improvvisatori.' Even yet, as Richardson tells us; 'it is a common
entertainment for the great and learned men in Persia, to assemble
together, with the view to an exercise of genius, in the resolving of
enigmas ... and to rival one another in the facility of composing and
replying to extempore verses, in which, from practice and a natural
liveliness of fancy, many of them arrive at an astonishing proficiency.'
Hence, as Goethe says of himself, the Persian Poets 'sang as the birds
sing;' and taking that master-singer of Nature, the Nightingale, as
their model, they too trilled in strains of unrivalled sweetness, range
and depth of tone, and consummate florid beauty. Even the most careless
reader cannot fail to be impressed by the affluence of imagery in the
Persian Lyrical Poetry, and no one has dwelt more suggestively than
Hegel on the spiritual significance of its characteristic profusion of
metaphors, images, similes, and comparisons.[16] But while so lavishly
employing the decorative forms common to all lyrical poetry, the Persian
Poets, with singular constructive originality, also created new lyrical
forms of their own, and carried them to their highest perfection. Chief
of these are the _Gazel_ and the _Divan_, two terms which are only now
being naturalised in our language, and becoming generally understood.
Here, again, it may be more serviceable to quote one or two authorities,
rather than to give a mere abstract definition; and as we have generally
found the _older_ authorities in these matters to be the best, we start
with Richardson's summary of the definitions of D'Herbelot and Revizky.
'The Ghazel or Eastern Ode—says Richardson—is a species of poem, the
subject of which is in general _Love_ and _Wine_, interspersed with
moral sentiments, and reflections on the virtues and vices of mankind.
It ought never to consist of less than 5 _beits_ or distichs, nor
exceed 18, according to D'Herbelot; if the poem is less than five, it
is then called _rabat_ or quartain; if it is more than eighteen, it
then assumes the name of _kasside_ or elegy. Baron Revizky[17] says,
that all poems of this kind which exceed 13 _beits_ [couplets], rank
with the _kasside_; and, according to Meninski, the ghazel ought never
to have more than 11.—Every verse in the same _ghazel_ must rhyme with
the same letter; and when a poet has completed a _series_ of such poems
(the rhymes of the first class being in _alif_ [a], the second in _be_
[b], and so on through the whole alphabet), it is called a _Divan_, and
he obtains the title of _Hafez_, or as the Arabians pronounce it,
_Hafedh_.... The _ghazel_ is more irregular than the Greek or Latin
Ode, one verse having often no apparent connection either with the
foregoing or subsequent couplets. Ghazels were often, says Baron
Revizky, written or spoken _extempore_ at banquets or public
festivities, when the poet, after expressing his ideas in one distich,
impatient of confinement, roved through the regions of fancy, as wine
or a luxuriant imagination inspired.'[18]
This is excellent, and thoroughly intelligible. But let us take from
Rückert's most learned work, the more authoritative concise statement of
the 'Heft Kolzum': 'The Ghazel is a poem of several Beits, which have
all one measure and one rhyme. According to some, there should not be
more than 11 Beits, according to others 12; but some are found having as
many as 19.'[19]
The term Gazel has now secured its place in our great Dictionaries, and
none gives it better than Professor Whitney's New York 'Century
Dictionary': 'Gázel (also Ghazal, Pers. _ghazal_, Ar. _ghazel_,
_ghazal_, a Love Poem). In Persian Poetry, a form of verse in which the
two first lines rime, and for this rime a new one must be found in the
second line of each succeeding couplet, the alternate line being
free.'—Dr. Murray's Oxford New English Dictionary defines thus: 'A
species of Oriental lyric poetry, generally of an erotic nature,
distinguished from other forms of Eastern verse by having a limited
number of Stanzas, and by the recurrence of the same rhyme.' And most
concise of all, Funk's Standard Dictionary: 'A Persian lyric poem,
amatory ode, drinking song, or religious hymn, having alternate verses
riming with the first couplet.' 'The _ghazel_ consists usually of not
less than five, or more than fifteen Couplets, all with the same
rhyme.'—W. R. Alger, Poetry of the East, p. 66.—Before leaving the
Dictionaries, be it noted briefly, that the word _gházǎl_ (originally
Arabic, and to be distinguished from _gházāl_, a young Fawn, _our_
Gazelle, through the French), derived from a root signifying to _spin_,
means in Persian, a thing _spun_, _twined_, _twisted_, as out of a
thread; and so it designates an ode, a short poem, a sonnet'
(Steingass), 'never exceeding 18 distichs, nor less than 5, _the last
line of every couplet ending with the same Letter in which the first
distich rhymes_.' (Richardson's Persian, Arabic and English Dictionary,
_s.v._).
All this is surely enough to elucidate the form and structure of the
Persian _ghazel_, but we may further quote a completing phrase or two
from that conscientious and much lamented Oriental Scholar, Mr. E. J. W.
Gibb, who has treated it most fully and accurately in his valuable works
on Ottoman Poetry. The Ghazel, he says, is 'the most typically Oriental
of all the verse-forms alike in the careful elaboration of its detail
and in its characteristic want of homogeneity. It is a short poem of not
fewer than four and not more than fifteen couplets. Such at any rate is
the theoretical limit, but Ghazels containing a much larger number of
couplets may occasionally be met with; this, however, is exceptional,
from five to ten being the average number.... If we employ the
alphabetical notation usually adopted when dealing with rhyme sequences,
we get the following for a Ghazel of six couplets: A.A : B.A : C.A : D.A :
E.A : F.A.... In point of style the poem should be faultless; all
imperfect rhymes, uncouth words questionable expressions must be
carefully avoided, and the same rhyme-word ought not to be repeated. It
is the most elegant and highly finished of all the old poetic forms....
Hence perhaps the extraordinary popularity of the form.... What the
sonnet was to the Italian, the Ghazel was to the Persians and Turks.'[20]
This will surely suffice to explain the structure and laws of the Gazel.
The Shakesperian Sonnet comes nearest its form in our poetical
versification, and can by comparatively slight modification be adapted
to it. Imagine the final rhyming couplet of such a sonnet placed first,
and the same rhyme carried on through each of the succeeding couplets in
the alternate even-numbered lines, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, while the other odd
lines (3, 5, etc.) are left unrhymed, and we would have a regular Gazel
which, however, might extend to 18 couplets in all. Or, taking another
familiar instance: let the Quatrain, as in Fitzgerald's 'Omar Khayyám,'
be _extended_ by adding further couplets (within the limits laid down)
to the _second_ couplet, all corresponding to it in form and rhyme, and
the Quatrain passes into a regular Gazel. The Fifty examples here given
are all in regular form within legitimate variation, and the structure
and rhyme in any of them may be seen at a glance, even in those with an
added recurring refrain in such as were generally adapted to accompany
mystic dancing. Simple as the structure of the Gazel itself is, it is
practically more difficult to construct it in English than in Persian,
from its relative paucity of suitable rhymes.
To Rückert belongs the unfading distinction of having introduced the
original form of the Ghazel into European Literature. For this
achievement he was particularly qualified by his poetic gift and his
deft power of artistic adaptation. An enthusiastic and loyal pupil of
Von Hammer, he soon surpassed his master by the greater accuracy of his
scholarship, his finer and deeper insight, and his unrivalled power of
sympathetically reproducing in German the spirit of Oriental Poetry. His
renderings of certain Gazels of Jeláleddín in 1819 and 1822 are
masterpieces of their kind in the fineness and delicacy of their form,
and they have never been equalled by similar subsequent attempts. The
highest praise that Mr. Nicholson can bestow on the later excellent
contribution in German of other 75 of Jelál's Ghazels by Von Rosenzweig,
the accomplished translator of Hafiz, is 'that we are occasionally
reminded of Rückert'; and, strangely enough, Mr. Nicholson makes no
other allusion to Rückert. Rückert, whose many wonderful feats of this
kind not only from Persian, but from Arabic, Sanskrit, and even Chinese,
are beyond all praise, was quite conscious both of the success and
importance of his effort, as is evident from the four lines on 'The Form
of the Gasel' which he prefixed to his Versions of Jelál's Gasels, which
may be rendered thus:—
The new Form which I first, here in thy Garden plant,
May, Fatherland, enrich the Garland of thy clime;
And in my steps may Poets, of happy power ne'er scant,
Sing true in Persian Gazel, as erst in alien rhyme.
Rückert's example and encouragement have not been ineffective in German
Literature. Besides his own original Gazels addressed to his
distinguished teacher Von Hammer, Platen with a poetic versatility and
elegance of form scarcely inferior to his own, Paul Heyse, and others
have written excellent German Gazels, and the form is now quite
naturalised in German Literature. But it is still practically an exotic
in the domain of English verse. One of the first and best regular Gazels
in English known to the writer, was done into English rhyme by
Archbishop Trench, who represents it as by DSCHELALEDDIN (_sic_), but it
is really only an imitation of one of Rückert's Versions. Some of the
recent translators of Hafiz—especially Mr. H. Bicknell—have given
elegant translations of some of his Gazels, in proper form.[21] Mr.
Nicholson, notwithstanding his disbelief in the adequacy of English
verse-renderings, has given two exemplary specimens in an Appendix. The
Fifty Gazels here presented in English have been all done after
Rückert's versions, of which they are really renderings—as indicated on
the Title Page. Even when the translator felt tempted to conform more
literally in some minor details to the Persian original, or fancied he
could do so, he invariably returned to Rückert's form, his admiration
for Rückert's judgment and art having overcome all hesitation. To
Rückert, then, belongs any merit found in these free imitations of
Jeláleddín; to the translator must be attributed any defect in his
attempt to follow, always _longo intervallo_, the traces of the
footsteps of these two great Masters. Rückert alone has been able to do
justice to the poetic form and thought of Jeláleddín, and it may be
deemed as daring to try to imitate Rückert as to copy the Original
itself. But the attempt, even where it fails, will be most readily
forgiven by the Persian scholars who best know the difficulties that
have to be overcome on both sides. What is here presented is but a
slight endeavour to popularise, after a holiday excursion into
long-loved fields, their own much more important work, and mayhap to win
a wider, well-deserved interest for it. The child who strays through the
Flower Garden, will, as by irresistible impulse, pluck some of its
fairest blossoms here and there, and if twined together and offered to
the strong hand that cultivated and reared them, they will hardly fail
to be recognised as an offering of gratitude and affection, and to be
accepted with a kindly, indulgent smile.
It is beautifully related in 'Attar's Biographies of the Sufi Mystics
and Saints,' that the sweet-soul'd, God-absorb'd Rábia—the Saint Teresa
and Madame Guyon of Persia—was once asked: 'Dost thou hate the Devil?'
'_No!_' she replied. And they asked: 'Why not?' '_Because_,' said she,
'_my love to God leaves me no time to hate him_.'[22] We confess,
however, that we _have_ hated this new-patch'd Omar Khayyám of Mr.
Fitzgerald, and have even at times been tempted to scorn the miserable,
self-deluded, unhealthy fanatics of his Cult. But when we have looked
again into the shining face and the glad eyes of Jeláleddín, 'the Glory
of Religion,' our hate has passed into pity and our scorn into
compassion. In the light of that bright Vision we cannot pause—we have
'no time' nor inclination for it—to deal, as it deserves, with this
latest literary craze and delusion. The Persian Scholars have been
amazed, and earnest Critics who still believe in the spiritual purpose
of Poetry, have been distressed by this infatuation of the young free
English mind, whose issue can only be the humiliation of convicted
ignorance, spurious idolatry, and vain remorseful regret after the mad
midnight debauch. All that is highest and noblest and truest in manhood
is not to be thus wilfully flung away for nothing, or to be foolishly
bartered for the smart Epigrams of the rudest wit and shallowest
reflection. Mr. Fitzgerald by clever tailoring has indeed clothed his
Satan in the well-fitting robes of an Angel of Light so that he might
'seduce, if it were possible, the very Elect,'—but for _them_ all in
vain do such 'lean and flashy songs, grate on their scrannel pipes of
wretched straw.' He has not hesitated even to eke out his vapid
pessimistic song with verses of his own, and to make his poor old Omar's
voice more cracked, querulous and quavering than it ever really was. And
he has therefore rightly enough separated his Bacchanalian Rhymster from
the holy Choir of the sweet-voiced Persian Songsters who ever made all
the grove vocal with devout praise of God. Mr. Fitzgerald's Omar—he
himself declares—is not a Sufi poet at all; he is but an old tipsy
toper, whose drink is literally and really that of Bacchus; and he
drinks—and _drinks_!—and _drinks_! till we hear him snore even in broad
day, and till his dimm'd eyes and fuddled brain cannot distinguish the
plainest things even in the clearest light. With Fitzgerald's hero it is
the old, sad story over again; it is _drinking—not deep thinking at
all_!—that has brought him to this. Surely we know the 'Astronomer Poet'
quite well now. M. Nicolas, and still better, Mr. Whinfield, have given
us his own Persian Quatrains, and Mr. Payne has translated them best of
all; but Edward Fitzgerald has turned them into a strange haunting music
of his own, and in his hands the Astronomer Poet becomes _really_ what
our gifted friend Mr. Coulson Kernahan has so graphically and terribly
depicted: A LITERARY GENT, A Study in Vanity and Dipsomania! Who cares
now for his senile scepticism, his pessimistic whine, his withered
cynicism, his agnostic blindness and despair, his insolent misanthropy,
his impotent blasphemies? We know it all too well; it is only the work
of shattered nerves, a muddled brain, and irreligious self-dissipation.
See how the Astronomer Poet staggers along to his watch-tower, with that
tell-tale nose and flushed brow! How his trembling hands fumble as he
vainly tries to focus the stars! How his bleared eyes can find neither
Zenith nor Azimuth, Algol nor Aldeboran, nor the Pointers, nor the Pole
Star; and how impudently he swears in his blindness, that he too has
swept through the Heavens and found _no God_! that man is but a 'Pot _of
Clay_,' without freedom and without hope! and that all the World is
bitter and hollow and bad! _Great Thinker_, forsooth! Well and truly
does he himself say that he was 'never _deep_ in anything but—_Wine_'!
But Mr. Fitzgerald protests that while Omar was not a Mystic, but only a
Bacchanalian Poet, and 'that while the Wine Omar celebrates is simply
the Juice of the Grape, he _bragged_ more than he drank of it.' But this
surely is to make him worse morally than the poor will-broken,
self-abandoned drunkard! Yet after all, the excuse of 'the moderate
drinker' is never quite to be trusted, as Mr. Fitzgerald himself in this
case only too fully proves. The 'Tavern' too is a literal Tavern, and
his very first presentation of his Hero introduces him to us crying for
fresh air at cock-crow, after the night's carouse, and his kindred
thirsty votaries shouting from the outside to get in:
'And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted—"Open then the Door!"'
We soon find that he has only one fixed Article in his Creed—the
_certainty_ of Annihilation:
'One thing at least is certain—_This_ Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.'
The _only_ thing here _certain_ however, is that this, according to all
Persian Prosody, is a _bad_, illegitimate Quatrain, and Omar himself
would never have rhymed it thus! And notwithstanding these 'brave
words,' it seems almost certain that the poor soul of the 'Astronomer
Poet' did not entirely die out with his last unsavoury breath; for is
there not the strongest _internal_ evidence—and pray, mark it well, in
these days of the Higher Criticism—that it was Omar Redivivus, in an
ill-starred, yet most sincere and loveable Rustic Bard of our own, who
sang gloriously at the same psychological moment, with his own
boon-companions, after seven centuries of world-wide drinking, again:
'It is the moon, _I ken her horn_,
That's blinkin' in the lift sae hie;
She shines sae bricht to wyle us hame,
But by my sooth she'll wait a wee!
We are na fou, we're no that fou,
But just a drappie in our ee;
The _Cock may craw_, the day may daw,
And aye we'll taste the barley bree!'
We are sorry to believe, notwithstanding Mr. Fitzgerald's rather lame
and halting Apology, that it became, more and more, a confirmed habit;
and that 'willy-nilly' the old Nature-tyrant had it out with him too.
Alas! that it should so often be so with these genial poetic
souls-poets, who in their youth 'begin in gladness, and thereof in the
end doth come Despondency and Madness'! In vain does the much-admired
Translator protest; for again he shows poor parched old Khayyám 'by the
Tavern Door _agape_'!; the Nightingale only pipes to him 'Wine! Wine!
Wine!'; his burden of Clay 'with long Oblivion is gone _dry_'!; his last
hope and only prayer is: 'Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide, And
_wash the Body_ whence the Life has died'; and his last word and the
final horror is—'an _empty_ Glass!' But he is much more candid in his
'cups' than his ingenious Translator, as all such are wont at a certain
stage to be; for he quite frankly tells us his Rule of Life: 'Drink!—for
once dead you never shall return!' Nay, he takes us, in the most
friendly way and with irresistible candour, into his most intimate
confidence, and informs us how and when, and how deliberately, when he
found out 'the sorry Scheme of Things,' his glorified new Creed and
boasted new Life came about:—
'You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced _old barren Reason_ from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse!'
And what _possibly_ could come of it, but what _did_ come? When it could
no longer be disputed that the Day _was_ dawning, _then_ the Reckoning
_must_ be settled, and his last leering grin is for his drunken
boon-companions, now alas! ignominiously low:—
'Landlady, count the lawin',
The Day is near the dawin';
_Ye're a' blind drunk, boys,
And I'm but jolly fou_.
Hey tutti, taiti,
How tutti, taiti—
_Wha's fou now?_'
O ye self-blinded, neurotic Votaries of the Omar Khayyám Cult, be warned
in time: for be sincerely assured that on counting 'the lawin', Paying
the Reckoning will be all that you will ever get, even at your drunkest,
out of this bankrupt, blustering, purblind Braggart!
To crown all his fatal Candour, Omar insists, as with a sigh of vain
regret, on most truly telling us his own callous judgment of it all,
seeing some faint inextinguishable spark of Conscience still remained in
him, as in the Ancient Mariner:—
'Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my credit in this World much wrong:
Have _drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup
And sold my Reputation for a song_!'
So, too, with Edward Fitzgerald, who, with consummate skill, has here
played the part of 'Mr. Sludge, the Medium' to perfection. And we only
wish that Robert Browning, in his Berserker rage over the painful
betrayal of what was dearest to him in life, had 'spit' _this_, and not
what he frantically did, 'in his face' as it burst from him in scorn of
one who confessed:—
'I cheated when I could,
Rapped with my toe-joints, set sham hands at work!...'
_'R-r-r ... Cowardly scamp!
I only wish I could burn down the house,
And spoil your sniggering._'[23]
But no! we have 'no time' to waste in hating even this dram-drinking,
drivelling, droning Dotard. For hark!—'That strain I heard was of a
higher mood'! Its very first note 'laps us in Elysium,' and we at once
forget man's self-inflicted misery and all his morbid diseases and
cares—'Do I wake or sleep?'...
... 'Tender is the Night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no Light
Save what from Heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what Flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft Incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable Month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child
The coming musk-rose full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves....
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The Voice I heard this passing Night was heard
In ancient days by Emperor and clown;
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic-casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.'
Yes; that is surely the sweetest, the tenderest, the heavenliest of all
the Persian Nightingales, come back to us in our sorest need, and
singing to us amid the glory of the Resurrection of Life, in the
Festival of another Spring, as he never sang in the English air before.
It is a Western youthful Poet's Dream of JELÁLEDDÍN renewing the first
notes of his immortal song, and chanting again the Hymn of Eternal Life,
solemn yet joyous, mystic yet clear: stirring what is deepest in our
heart and driving away our sorrow, till 'all the pulses of our being,
reanimated, beat anew!'
'O ye hopes, that stir within me,
Health comes with you from above!
God is with me, God is in me!
I cannot die, if Life be Love.'
Thus does our own deep, mystic Singer, Coleridge, echo, in kindred
strains, the deepest Faith of JELÁLEDDÍN.
W. H.
[1] Geschichte der schönen Redekünste Persiens, mit einer Blüthenlese
aus zweihundert persischen Dichtern. Von Joseph von Hammer. Wien, 1818.
Pp. 163-198. The petty criticism of some of Von Hammer's details has no
relevancy here, and is hardly worth referring to in connection with his
gigantic achievements. There are spots on the Sun!
[2] Mesnevi oder Doppelverse des Scheich Mewlânâ Dschelâl-ed-dín Rumi.
Aus dem Persischen übertragen von Georg Rosen. 1849.
[3] Works of Sir William Jones, Vol. IV., On the Mystical Poetry of the
Persians and Hindus. See Note A.
[4] History of Persia. 1815. Sir John Malcolm was surprised in Persia,
as Rosen was at Constantinople, by the knowledge which the common people
had of the great Persian Poets. He says:—'I was forcibly struck with
this fact during my residence in Persia. I found several of my servants
well acquainted with the poetry of their country; and when I was at
Isfahan in 1800, I was surprised to hear a common tailor that was at
work repairing one of my tents, entertain his companions with repeating
some of the finest of the mystical odes of Háfidz.'
[5] Biographical Notices of Persian Poets, etc. 1846. A conscientious
bit of work for the time, but inadequately edited, and now practically
superseded.
[6] One e.g. by F. Falconer (but not in the Persian form) in July, 1839.
[7] The Mesnevi (usually known as the Mesneviyi Sherīf, or Holy Mesnevi
of Mevlānā (our Lord) Jelálu-'d-dín, Muhammed, er-Rumi). Book the First,
etc., by James W. Redhouse. London, 1881.
Masnavi i Ma'navi. The Spiritual Couplets of Maulána Jalálu-'d-dín
Muhammad Rumi, Translated and abridged by E. H. Whinfield, M.A., Late of
H.M. Bengal Civil Service. 2nd Ed. 1898 (with an interesting
Introduction).
[8] Selected Poems from the Dīvāni Shamsi Tabrīz. Edited and Translated
with an Introduction, Notes, and Appendices, by Reynold A. Nicholson,
M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Cambridge University Press,
1898.
[9] A Literary History of Persia From the Earliest Times until
Firdawsí. By Edward G. Browne, M.A., M.B., Sir Thomas Adams' Professor
of Arabic and sometime Lecturer in Persian in the University of
Cambridge, 1902.
[10] Hegel's Encyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im
Grundrisse. § 573. Werke, Bd. VII, 461.
[11] Wallace's Hegel's Philosophy of Mind translated. Oxford, 1894, p.
190.—The four Gazels from which Hegel quotes, are given in the following
Series in the Rückert-Persian form—as XLVIII, XII, XLIII, II.
[12] As regards Hegel's Philosophy of Art generally, and the particular
point under consideration, reference may be allowed to my little book:
'The Philosophy of Art, by Hegel and C. L. Michelet,' 1886. See
especially pp. 94-6.
[13] Hegel's Werke, X, 473. For Hegel's view of the character of the
Persian Lyrical Poetry, see note _B_. M. Bénard's French Translation,
which has been much praised, gives the passage quoted above, only in a
summary form, and in it the reference to Rückert is entirely left out.
He too, like so many other translators, has the happy knack of slipping
over a troublesome phrase at times, while gracefully flourishing an
elegant sentence before the delighted eyes of his guileless Reader!
[14] Ssufismus sive Theosophia Persarum Pantheistica quam ex MSS.
Persicis, Arabicis, Turcicis, fruit atque illustravit F. A. G. Tholuck.
1821.
[15] Blüthensammlung aus der Morgenländischen Mystik, nebst einer
Einleitung über Mystik überhaupt und Morgenländische insbesondere. Von
F. A. G. Tholuck, Professor zu Berlin. 1825.
[16] Werke, x. 468.
[17] Specimen Poeseos Persicae. Vienna, 1771.
[18] A specimen of Persian Poetry, or Odes of Hafez: with an English
Translation and Paraphrase ... chiefly from Baron Revizky. By John
Richardson, F.S.A., 1774. 2nd Ed. by Rousseau, 1802.
[19] Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser. Nach dem siebenten
Bande des Heft Kolzum, Dargestellt von Friedrich Rückert. Neu
herausgegeben von W. Pertsch, 1874, p. 57.
[20] A History of Ottoman Poetry, 1900, p. 80. See also Mr. Gibb's
Ottoman Poems, 1882, p. xxxvi. Both contain excellent Gazels.
[21] Hafiz of Shiraz: Selections from his Poems by H. Bicknell. 1875.
[22] E. G. Browne, _Op. cit._ p. 399.
[23] If anyone is inclined to think anything in this criticism—which
has been much curtailed—too severe, let him or her turn to Von Hammer's
Account of Omar Khayyám in Note C and following Remarks.
Gazels of Jeláleddín
Done into English
'Why heed the Critics who delight to dart
Their sneer-tipped arrows at translator's art?
The poet's work remains his own at last
Though it in other languages be cast.
And in the sky of Fame it still will shine,
By that which made it at the first divine.
But in this foreign dress some soul may see
A hint of that which fascinated me;
Some deep impression be still deeper made
When by our muse-beloved tongue conveyed;
Some beauty be with newer beauty set;
Some thought that will with fresh emotion fret
Some gentle breast, or with strange music sweep
O'er heaving waters of the spirit's deep.'
EDWARD ROBESON TAYLOR of San Francisco.
Light
I.
Until the glorious Sun hath vanquished Night,
The Birds of Day cower trembling with affright.
But lo! a bright glance bids the Tulip ope;
O Heart, awake thou too, in Duty's might.
The Sun's Sword sheds in reddening flush of Dawn
The Blood of Night, and puts the Foe to flight.
The Soul still full of sleep, dreams Night prevails;
But no! Day comes, and triumphs full in sight.
While grey Dawn lingers, dubious yet is Day;
But in Day's glow, who still can doubt the Light.
The Light grows in the East; I in the West
On Mountain top, reflect the Morn's delight.
To Beauty's Sun, I'm but the pale moon here;
Then look from me towards the Sun's face bright.
The Light in East is called JELÁLEDDÍN[24];
And here my verse reflects its glowing White.
[24] The Splendour of the Faith.
Death and Life
II.
Death endeth sure Life's need and pain;
Yet Life in fear would Death restrain.
Life only sees dark Death's dread Hand,
Not that bright Cup it offered plain.
So shrinks from Love the tender Heart,
As if from threat of being slain.
But when true Love awakens, dies
The Self, that despot dark and vain.
Then let him die in Night's black hour,
And freely breathe in Dawn again.
Invocation
III.
Soul of mine, thou dawning Light: Be not far, O be not far!
Love of mine, thou Vision bright: Be not far, O be not far!
Life is where thou smilest sweetly; Death is in thy parting look;
Here mid Death and Life's fierce fight: Be not far, O be not far!
I am East when thou art rising; I am West when thou dost set;
Bring Heaven's own radiant hues to sight: Be not far, O be not far!
See how well my Turban fitteth, yet the Parsee Girdle binds me;
Cord and Wallet I bear light: Be not far, O be not far!
True Parsee and true Brahman, a Christian, yet a Mussulman;
Thee I trust, Supreme by Right: Be not far, O be not far!
In all Mosques, Pagodas, Churches, I do find One Shrine alone;
Thy Face is there my sole delight: Be not far, O be not far!
Thine the World's all-loving Heart; and for it I yearn and pray;
O take not from my Heart thy flight: Be not far, O be not far!
Thee, the World's Eternal Centre, here I circle round in prayer;
Thy absence is last judgment quite: Be not far, O be not far!
Thine, Judgment Day and Blessedness: Mine is Bliss when Thou art nigh;
Keep me circling in thy Might: Be not far, O be not far!
Fair World Rose, O blossom forth; sweet Heart-buds unfold in Love;
Put on the longing Soul's pure White: Be not far, O be not far!
O Rose, hear through Night's silence, how he thrills—thy Nightingale;
As if I did his Notes indite: Be not far, O be not far!
JELÁLEDDÍN, all loving, let Love's Heart resist no more:
Hear him chaunting, Day and Night: Be not far, O be not far!
Faith
IV.
All Unbelief is Midnight, but Faith the Night-Lamp's glow;
Then see that no Thief cometh to steal thy Lamp when low.
Our Hope is for the Sunlight, from which the Lamp did shine;
The Light from which it kindled, still feeds its flame below.
But when the Sun hath risen, both Night and Lamp go out;
And Unbelief and Faith then, the higher Vision know.
O Night! Why art thou dreaming? O Lamp! Why flickerest so?
The swift Sun-horses panting, from East their fire-foam throw.
'Tis Night still in the shadow; the village Lamp burns dim;
But in Dawn's Splendour towering, the Peaks Heaven's Glory show.
Dawn
V.
The Day has dawned, thy festal Day, O Rose;
Our cheeks all glow in thy bright Ray, O Rose.
Love was the Gardener of the Rose-bed there;
And now thy Flower blooms forth all gay, O Rose.
When Herald Breezes blew: _The Rose!_ the Flowers
Kneeling to thee glad Homage pay, O Rose.
The Tulips danced; the Lilies, drinking there,
Their brightest hues to thee display, O Rose.
The Cypress whispered to the Ivy: Wake!
Why dream'st thou, Child? She dreamed thy Play, O Rose;
The Nightingale a thousand long nights through
But trilled thy own sweet Melody, O Rose.
The Heavens more fair assume thy radiant form,
But thou outviest their Phantasy, O Rose.
The Rose a message brings from Paradise
Where Souls for thee all eager stay, O Rose.
The Rose brings greeting to the Soul from Home;
The Soul forgets thee not for aye, O Rose.
The Rose unfolds the Sign of Beauty there:
God's Seal Himself the Poets say, O Rose.
The Soul crowns all Man's festal Cup of Joy;
That he with thee may breathe Life's May, O Rose.
The Rose is twined in all Life's gladdest Bonds,
That Love from Man ne'er flee away, O Rose.
Be closed in Buds thy Lips; but there let shine
The Smile that ever in thee lay, O Rose.
Allah Hu!
VI.
Sound Drum and mellow Flute, resounding: ALLAH HU[25]!
Dance, ruddy Dawn, in Gladness bounding: ALLAH HU!
Sun exalted in the Centre, O thou streaming Light;
Soul of all wheeling Planets rounding: ALLAH HU!
O Hearts! O Worlds! how soon your Dancing all would stop,
Did not His Power sustain astounding! ALLAH HU!
Love mazy, winding, changing, all embraces,
The Night, the Dawn, the Day, resounding: ALLAH HU!
Boom, Sea! on Shore, and Rock, thy Music praising God;
O Nightingale to Rose trill, sounding: ALLAH HU!
O Soul, what if one Star should falter in the Dance?
His Will is Order ever founding: ALLAH HU!
Who knows Love's mazy circling, ever lives in God;
For Death, he knows, is Love abounding: ALLAH HU!
[25] HE is GOD.
Spring
VII.
O Eyes, go forth the Spring to view,
That smiles upon our Plains anew.
A Heavenly Child in cradling Flowers,
Sweet Breath from Skies unclouded drew.
The Morning Breeze his Nurse, that rocked
His Cradle, with soft Lullings due.
The Baby feigns to sleep, and blinks,
Shutting his little Eyelids two.
And when the Lids are oped again,
The Eyebrows drip with sparkling Dew.
The Bees hum round and busy sip
The Nectar, and make Honey new.
O come, and let the Baby's smiles
And Laughter, pierce thee through and through.
O come, and leave your wintry Cell,
And let Heaven's Light thy Life renew.
And build new Cells with honey'd Wax,
Plann'd like the Bees' six-sided, true.
And warmed by radiant Fire of Flowers,
Old Winter's reign of Death undo.
Regret is dead; Love lives again;
New Life transforms the Landscape's Hue.
Bold enter, then, green Spring's loved Haunts,
And drink fresh Wine, nor fear to rue.
And drinking full Love's sweetest Draught,
The glowing Heart new Love shall woo.
Love wakes afresh in Earth and Heaven;
The Rose in green, the Sun in blue.
O Nightingale, behold thy Rose!
O Eagle, thy bright Sun pursue!
Spring's Festival
VIII.
Our Fasting is over; 'tis Spring's festal Day: Hallelu!
O dearest Guest welcome, all Sorrow's away: Hallelu!
O Love once forsaken, forsaken Heart now be forsaken;
Thy loved One has come, and for ever will stay: Hallelu!
The Parting is parted; the Sev'rance at last is all sever'd;
The Union united, without more delay: Hallelu!
The Flight is now flown off; the Banishment's pain is now banished;
All distant the Distance; our Bird Nest all gay: Hallelu!
The Moon in the Heavens, the Rose in the Heart, in Love's Garden;
The King in his Palace, proud Banners display: Hallelu!
Life stirs in the Rootlet; soft Sap in the Leaflet is spreading;
Green Buds on the Branches are crowning his Sway: Hallelu!
Let come our Foe hated, for now will he meet our Defender;
We scorn and defy him, all safe now for aye: Hallelu!
Yea, flood me all over, all over with Fire of Love burning;
Now well can I bear it; I'll ne'er burn away: Hallelu!
And now it is certain my Soul is bound up in Salvation;
And all of Earth's sadness is sunk in Earth's clay: Hallelu!
O Chalice full brimming, poured out for the thirst of the worlds;
We thank thee, we bless thee, and drink while we pray: Hallelu!
Long parch'd lay the World, a Desert profane, till thy Breath came
On Wings of the Morning, when bright the Dew lay: Hallelu!
We longed as we waited for Spring's Sun our Life to renew;
JELÁLEDDÍN'S warm Breath from East came to-day: HALLELU!
Dependence
IX.
I am the Vine; Strong Elm, O give me leave,
All round thee my fond Tendrils now to weave.
I am the Ivy; be my Cedar Trunk,
That I no more to Earth's damp soil may cleave.
I am the Bird; O come, be my light Wings,
That soaring I yon azure Heaven retrieve.
I am the Steed; O come and be my spur,
That quick the Victor Goal may me receive.
I am the Rosebud; O be my own Rose,
That gaudy Earth-weeds ne'er my Heart deceive.
I am the East; then rise in me, O Sun,
Flame up in Light, and all my Pain relieve.
I am the Night; O be my Starry Crown,
That in Life's darkness I nor fear, nor grieve.
Mystical Union
X.
With Thy sweet Soul, this Soul of mine—
Hath mixed as Water doth with Wine.
Who can the Wine and Water part,
Or me and Thee when we combine?
Thou art become my greater Self;
Small Bounds no more can me confine.
Thou hast my Being taken on,
And shall not I now take on Thine?
Me Thou for ever hast affirmed,
That I may ever know Thee mine.
Thy Love has pierced me through and through,
Its Thrill with Bone and Nerve entwine.
I rest a Flute laid on Thy Lips;
A Lute I on Thy Breast recline.
Breathe deep in me that I may sigh;
Yet strike my Strings, and Tears shall shine.
So sweet my Tears, my Sighs so sweet,
I to the World its Joys resign.
Thou restest in my inmost Soul
Whose depths the mirror'd Heaven define.
O Pearl in my Mussel Shell:
O Diamond in my darkest Mine!
My Honey is in Thee dissolved;
O Milk of Life, so mild, so fine!
Our Sweetnesses all blent in Thee,
Give infant Lips their Smiles benign.
Thou crushest me to Drops of Rose;
Nor 'neath the Press do I repine.
In Thy sweet Pain is Pain forgot;
For I, Thy Rose, had this design.
Thou bad'st me blossom on Thy Robe,
And mad'st me for all eyes Thy Sign.
And when Thou pour'st me on the World,
It blows in Beauty, all Divine.
Identity
XI.
Although thy Brightness glistens in the Sun, indeed;
Yet is my Light with thine all radiant, One, indeed!
Thou mad'st of Dust all glitt'ring the circling Heavens above;
Yet will with mine thy Spirit ne'er Union shun, indeed!
To Dust return the Heavens; again Heavens spring from Dust;
Yet hast thou in my Being thy own Life spun, indeed!
Now have the Words Eternal that through Heaven's vastness ring,
Found Home in human Bosom, and dearer none, indeed!
Thou hast the Sunbeams hidden, that in the Diamond glow,
Deep, deep in Earth's dark Chambers, a Wonder done, indeed!
See, though in vile Soil feeding, and drinking filthy slime,
To yon Rose peerless Beauty, in Love, hath run, indeed!
O Heart, and be it thou swimmest in Flood, or glow'st in Fire,
The same are Fire and Flood: Be pure, my Son, indeed!
O MEVLANA, at Morning I woke, and found with thee,
My Eyes from Tears all brighten'd, and Heaven now won, indeed!
Confession
XII.
O LOVE, to thee I own, I wept in Night's dark Thought;
But now thy radiant Sun to me hath bright Day brought.
O SOUL of my own Soul, my I as I am Thou:
Thou art the All, and I in thee have all I sought.
Thou art Life's Sweetness self, Intoxication full,—
The brimming Sea of Pearls, the Gold to pureness wrought.
Whoe'er approaches thee, must first his Soul resign;
He dies beneath thy frown, lives when thy Smile is caught.
Thy Favour thrills in fear the trembling Lover's heart,
Till comes thy Wrath and smites his Weakness into Naught.
Discordia Concors
XIII.
I saw how Sunward soaring, an Eagle cleaved the air;
And how in Shadow sitting, there coo'd a Turtle pair.
I saw how o'er the Heavens, the Clouds in Herds rush'd wild;
And how close round the Shepherd the Lambkins gather'd fair.
I heard the Stars all asking: When shall we rise again?
And Buds in Seedlings folded sigh: Doth Love for us care?
I saw a Grass blade blossom at Morn and fade at Night;
While Cedars braved a thousand Years the Tempests raging there.
I saw old Ocean's Billows like Kings all crowned with foam,
Then flung from Rocks, down fallen, like Penitents in Prayer.
I saw a Dewdrop sparkling, nor did it Danger dread;
But, soon consumed, it vanish'd, that sun-bright Jewel rare.
I saw close crowding Mankind new Towns and Castles rear;
And swarming Ants heaped Hillocks up, with Winter's garner'd fare.
I saw the Warhorse prancing and trampling golden Grain;
And all his Hoofs were redden'd with the Blood of Love's Despair.
I saw the Winter weaving from Flakes a Robe of Death;
And the Spring found Earth in Mourning, all naked, lone and bare.
I heard Time's Loom a-whirring that wove the Sun's dim Veil;
I saw a Worm a-weaving in Life-threads its own Lair.
I saw the Great was Smallest, and saw the Smallest Great;
For God had set His Likeness on all the Things that were.
Renovation
XIV.
Come, O Springtide of my Love: the World, again, make New!
Light in Heaven and Flowers on Earth, o'er Hill and Plain, make New!
With the blue gleaming Sun-gem, set thy new green Turban on;
And o'er the Fields all verdant, thy floral Train, make New!
Paint Meadows fresh with bright Buds, let Hedgerows sprout once more;
Rose Breast-Knots, slender Lilies in bathing Rain, make New!
Melt with thy warm Breath Winter's iced Coat and frozen Spear;
With tender Smile shame Hatred; Peace, ending Pain, make New!
The Air pines for thy Whisper, and the Rose's Breath is faint;
Then from Slumber rouse thy Zephyrs, and the feather'd Vane, make New!
Roll, Thunder, pour thy Bounty adown from bursting Cloud;
Now bathe from Head to Foot free, and Death's Disdain, make New!
Strike, Pine, upon the Wind-drum! O Plane-tree, clap thy Hands!
Brooding Love, the dreamy birth Down on feather'd Train, make New!
Vines, twine around the Elm Trees, God's Glory showing fair;
While Violets kiss the soft Sod, Spring's sweet Hymn-strain, make New!
Hyacinths the Tulips fondle; woos Rose the Nightingale.
While Turtles coo in low Notes, my Song's Refrain, make New!
Kindle Altar-fire in Blossoms, in Fragrance Incense burn;
The Pan Pipes that in dead Grass, long have silent lain, make New!
Let Leaves shoot quivering Tongues out, Love's Questionings in Play;
And whisp'ring to each other, Love's Wrangling vain, make New.
Hark! How the Morning Breezes, at rosy Dawn all call:
Up! Up! O Friend, 'tis Spring-time: the Soul's glad Reign, make New!
Behold the Spring in Glory! O thou Alchemist of Flowers,
Smelt the fiery Glow to Blossoms; our World, again, make New!
Revolving in Mystic Dance
XV.
Come! Come! Thou art the Soul, the Soul so dear, Revolving!
Come! Come! Thou art the Cedar, the Cedar's Spear, Revolving!
O Come! The Well of Light up-bubbling springs;
And Morning Stars exult, in Gladness sheer, Revolving!
Of the o'er-arching Heavens, the Highest is the Seventh;
But over all thou stretchest, bright, and clear, Revolving!
In warmest Arms of Love thou hold'st me clasped,
And thee I hold enclasped, soft breathing, near, Revolving!
In Sunbeams dance the Motes, by Sunlight grasped,
O Sunlight, grasping me, dispel my Fear, Revolving!
The Motes dance mute, yet telling all of Love;
O silent Love! Teach me thy own Dance here, Revolving!
The Soul in All
XVI.
A mote I in the Sunshine, yet am the Sun's vast Ball;
I bid the Sun spread Sunlight, and make the Mote be small.
I am the Morning Splendour; I am the Evening Breeze;
I am the Leaf's soft Rustle; the Billow's Rise and Fall.
I am the Mast and Rudder, the Steersman and the Ship;
I am the Cliff out-jutting, the Reef of Coral Wall.
I am the Bird Ensnarer, the Bird and Net as well;
I am both Glass and Image; the Echo and the Call.
I am the Tree and Branches, and all the Birds thereon;
I am both Thought and Silence, Tongues' Speech, and Ocean Squall.
I am the Flute when piping, and Man's Soul breathing breath;
I am the sparkling Diamond, and Metals that enthrall.
I am the Grape enclustered, the Wine-press and the Must;
I am the Wine, Cup-bearer, and crystal Goblet tall.
I am the Flame and Butterfly, which round it circling flits;
I am the Rose and Nightingale, the Rose's Passioned Thrall.
I am the Cure and Doctor, Disease and Antidote;
I am the Sweet and Bitter, the Honey and the Gall.
I am the War and Warrior, the Victor and the Field;
I am the City peaceful, the Battle and the Brawl.
I am the Brick and Mortar, the Builder and the Plan,
I am the Base and Gable, new House and ruined Hall.
I am the Stag and Lion, the Lamb and black-maw'd Wolf;
I am the Keeper of them, who shuts them in one Stall.
I am the Chain of Beings, the Ring of circling Worlds;
The Stages of Creation, where'er it rise or fall.
I am what is and is not; I am—O Thou who know'st,
Jeláleddín, O tell it—I AM the SOUL in All!
Responsibility
XVII.
O thou who hast come safely, into this Being's Land;
Strange, thou thyself not knowest, how thou didst reach its Strand.—
Straight from the great Shah's Chamber, thou cam'st to Being's Town,
Sent here to do the Business which he himself had planned.
The Lord gave, then, to prove thee, Capacity to do;
And as entrusted Capital, thy Sum of Life in hand.
How has the Market's Turmoil confused thy Sense and Brain;
That thou the Pledge entrusted, can yet not understand?
O cease to dream and rouse thee; and do thy Duty well;
Buy choicest Pearls more wisely, and give not Gold for Sand.
When thou to Home returnest, thou'lt see Him sitting there;
Thy Lord with His Book open, and His own faithful Band.
He will hold count, and reckon all that Himself did give;
And ask how thou did'st use it, when under His Command.
And then will come His Blessing, or Curse, both just and sure,
According as thy Credit, or thy Debt, summed up shall stand.
Action
XVIII.
Awake! 'Tis Day! Rise up, O Youthful Mussulman!
Pack quick thy Goods and Baggage, and catch the Caravan.
O List! I hear it coming, 'twill sweep past while you sleep;
Hark! Tinkling Bells are calling to come, while come you can.
When once the Desert Sand-storm has o'er the Foot-prints blown,
You them will find no longer, however close you scan.
Up! Brace yourself for Action, as a Man all prompt and bold;
And waste not Life fond, dreaming, in idlesse, pining, wan.
Think of your noble Forbears, the gallant Youth of old;
Of Rustum, bravest Hero; of Sal, the Pehlevan.[26]
Be, too, of Right the Champion, Knight of the spotless Sun!
Fall not a Prey to Darkness, o'erthrown by Ahriman.
When once in struggle valiant, the earthly Soul is slain,
The Heavenly Soul bears proudly Life's Banner in the Van.
When thou thyself hast conquered, and triumphed in the Fight;
A diamond Ring thou'lt ever shine, in our Lord Shah's Divan.
[26] Pehlevan, _i.e._ of the old heroic Age. 'Rustum, the "Hercules" of
Persia, and Zál his Father, whose exploits are among the most celebrated
in the Sháhnáma' (Fitzgerald). Compare Matthew Arnold's 'Sohrab and
Rustum. An Episode.'
Bondage
XIX.
Complain not that in Chains, thou here art firmly bound;
Complain not that Earth's Yoke, doth crush thee to the Ground.
Complain not that the World is but a Prison wide;
'Tis only thy complainings that build thy Dungeon round.
And ask not how Life's Riddle will finally unfold;
For soon without thy asking, unfolded 'twill be found.
Say not Love has forsaken or yet forgotten thee;
Love ne'er has Man forsaken; thy Words all falsely sound.
Nor tremble when Death dreaded appears in Terror's Form;
He falls before the Hero, who is with Courage crowned.
Ne'er chase the Phantom, Pleasure; for like a hungry Lion,
'Twill turn and rend in pieces the Hunter most renowned.
Throw not thyself in Fetters; else will Men sternly say:
Complain not of thy Fetters; for thou thyself hast bound.
Love's Freedom
XX.
O Bird, that freest to Freedom win;
Love caged thee in that Prison thin.
O Soul, if thou, too, wouldst be free,
Then love the Love that shuts thee in.
'Tis Love that twisteth every Snare;
'Tis Love that snaps the Bond of Sin.
Love sounds the Music of the Spheres;
Love echoes through Earth's harshest Din.
Love fills with Fragrance Heaven's sweet Air;
Love's deft Hands Life's gold Fibres spin.
The World is God's pure Mirror clear,
To Eyes when free from Clouds within.
With Love's own Eyes the Mirror view,
And there see God to Self akin.
Then praise Him, Soul, enflamed with Love
As Larks in Dawn, new Songs begin.
In My Heart
XXI.
O, what a Throb of Toil is in my Heart!
What Shrine's crowd-trodden Soil is in my Heart!
The Spring has come; again the Sower sows,
And all the Season's Moil is in my Heart.
The Veil which hid the World's fair face is drawn;
Disclosed, its inmost Coil is in my Heart.
The Heart must higher rise, than setting Suns;
The Sun-dance nought can foil is in my Heart.
The Heart has well been named the Shah's own throne;
And warm anointing Oil is in my Heart.
The Heart's deep Ocean rolls a thousand waves;
And rich Pearl-diver's Spoil is in my Heart.
Jeláleddín! The Heart is sure both Mine and Mint;
For Fire, as Gold did boil, is in my Heart.
Not Deaf to Love
XXII.
O Brother hear! Be deaf no more, to Love:
Thy heart now open to its Core, to Love!
Hast thou in Pride, all vain, upraised thy Head?
Come bend it now down to the Floor, to Love.
In Dust thou shalt new living Grace receive,
As Spring awakes the Landscape frore, to Love.
And once thou hast put on Love's Leaves and Flowers,
Comes golden Fruit in Autumn hoar, to Love.
And when thou fadest sere, then burn thyself;
And give thy Ashes, all Earth bore, to Love.
And wing'd, from Ashes wilt thou fairer rise;
And with Love's highest Message soar, to Love.
Assimilation
XXIII
New Sword from Maker's Hand, in Edge and Point all bright;
See that in dirty Scabbard, it rust not, out of Sight!
Gold that in Miser's Coffer, in Blackness meanly lay,
Upon the Shah's Throne gleaming, becomes a World's Delight.
When full Clouds pour the Rain-drops, lo! every glad Tree drinks;
Fruits redden on the Apple tree, as Leaves grow pale in Fright.
This Stalk an empty Pipe still, in that sweet Sugar swells;
Yet both did sip the same Tank, at Morning, Noon, and Night.
One Deer distils perfumed Musk, another bitterest Gall,
Yet grazed together, side by side, upon the self-same Height.
Two creeping Worms together fed upon the same green Leaf;
One spins mere useless Theadlets, the other Silk aright.
The Bee's Lip, and the Snake's sucked from the self-same Flower;
The one made Honey's Sweetness, the other Poison's Bite.
One dines, and all his Nutriment transmutes to Life divine;
Another's Food is souring to Hatred and to Spite.
One's Eyes drink Light till blinded; the other stores it up,
And glows in rosy Brightness, Love-robed in red and white.
Be pure in all thy Members, and from Nature's golden Tree
Pluck God's own Blessing daily, and grow in Manhood's Might.
Cleanliness
XXIV.
Clean be kept thy Garment, and
Clean be kept thy Mouth and Hand.
Clean thy Garment from false Gawds
Clean from all Earth's Filth thy Hand.
Clean thy Heart from earthly Spite;
Clean thy Lips from Greed's Demand.
Outer Threshhold ever clean,
Clean within let all Things stand.
House all clean, might entertain
Angel from the Heavenly Land.
Clean the Food, and clean the cup,
Clean the Wall from smoking Brand.
Son! Thy outward Cleanliness
Pledge of inward is, when scanned.
Clean let Hand and Mouth be kept;
Clean thy Garment's every Strand.
Where is He?
XXV.
I ask all I meet: Where is He?
In me incomplete: Where is He?
The Tree of my Thought stretch'd on high,
Reach'd not to His Seat: Where is He?
I ask of the Wanderers by Day:
My loved One, most sweet, Where is He?
I ask of the Keepers of Vines:
My loved One, most sweet, Where is He?
I rush through the Woods and the Fields,
And ask the Stag fleet: Where is He?
At Night when in Darkness He hides,
In Fear I repeat: Where is He?
I ask of the Sun and the Moon,
And Stars in retreat: Where is He?
He is not with me. Who has seen
The Path of His Feet? Where is He?
O Master, if thou hast Him found,
O tell, I entreat: Where is He?
Love's Slavery
XXVI.
Come, and be Love's willing Slave;
Thee Love's Slavery will save.
Leave the Slavery of the World,
Take Love's Service, sweet and brave.
The Free, the World makes enslaved;
Aye to Slaves, Love Freedom gave.
As the Bird freed from the Egg,
From the World release I crave.
Free me from the Shell that clings;
Give me Life as from the Grave.
O Love, the Quail in Spring's Free Fields,
In Songs of wildest Joy must rave.
Psyche in Tears
XXVII.
Psyche sits, and lovelier seems;
Ah! she of her Lover dreams!
Still his Kiss she softly feels;
Still his Smile in Fancy gleams.
But in Light she fain would see
Love's own Self, nor wrong it deems.
Trembling her white Hand hath ta'en
Lamp to light, as Fancy schemes.
There by flickering Flame she scans
Beauty which she Heaven esteems.
But the fluttering Oil did shake,
Shamed to find eclipsed its Beams.
Fell one hot Drop on Love's Hand:
Oh! the Lover waken'd screams!
Love light-pinion'd flies away;
Psyche's Wings, Tears drench in Streams.
Substitutional
XXVIII.
Where the cleansing Water fails,
Sand, as Substitute, avails.
This, at Need, the Prophet gave;
And his Rule to-day prevails.
Know ye, O Believers, why?
Hear the Truth the Sage unveils.—
The Desert oft no Water shows,
But never Sand the Traveller fails.
From the Desert I will guide
Him who me as Leader hails.
To where living Waters flow,
To the Garden Love empales.
Bathe there in Abundance full,
Where no hostile Drought assails.
Full, that Stream Bath, now enjoy'd,
Freedom from Sand Bath entails.
So from Formulas made free,
Spirit Life o'er all prevails.—
Master! Thy high Soul hath seen
Truth through all its hiding Veils.
God's Throne
XXIX.
Unto your Fathers, Allah did make known
This which they handed down and made your own,—
That all who pray My Face may clearly see,
I sit exalted high on Heaven's great Throne.
As I in Heaven, so you I place on Earth,
That I in my Vicegerents, may be shown.
Serve Me then, that the World may serve you too
Made to do good—this is your End alone.
The World was fitly made to help you well:
No Traitors be; let all my Justice own.
And glorify the Maker of the World,
Until the Rose of Peace hath round you blown.
The Lion of God
XXX.
Fairest Flower beneath the Skies:
Ali Abutaleb's Son!
Fairest Flower in Paradise:
Ali Abutaleb's Son!
God's brave Lion, lamb-like, gentle,
Clearest Mirror, ever bright:
Pure in Faith, without Disguise:
Ali Abutaleb's Son!
Next the Prophet is thy Place,
All his Splendour flashing round:
Thy bright Light too floods our Eyes:
Ali Abutaleb's Son!
By Renouncing, daring Soul,
And by braving Danger too:
Thou hast won the Hero's Prize:
Ali Abutaleb's Son!
Straight thy Strength of Soul and Limb
Bore thee to the thickest Fight:
Death thy giant Thews despise:
Ali Abutaleb's Son!
All the Paths we tread to-day,
Thou hast traced them, Son of Light!
Let on us thy Beams arise:
Ali Abutaleb's Son!
Leader, Guide, and Champion true,
Ever foremost in the Van:
Where thou leadest, Honour lies:
Ali Abutaleb's Son!
Maulānā, in Hymn of Praise
Thee I laud, Jeláleddín!
Even as thou praisest wise,
Ali Abutaleb's Son!
Self-Realisation
XXXI.
When I knew myself a Thorn, soft Rose-buds' Swell
I sought for then;
When I saw myself all bitter, sweet Honey's Cell
I sought for then.
When I saw myself all Poison, I quaffed Life's Stream
as Antidote;
When I saw myself Lees turbid, Wine's clear Foam Bell
I sought for then.
When I saw myself all sour Fruit, I caught the ripening
Sunbeams' Glow;
When I saw myself droop feebly, the breezy Fell
I sought for then.
When I saw myself all blinded, the healing Power
of Jesus' Hand;
When I knew it could the Darkness from my Eyes dispel
I sought for then.[27]
Love's Touch became my Eyesalve, and all my Soul's
dull Blindness fled;
And, my Heart of Thirst a-dying, His sweet, pure Well
I sought for then.
I am Fire that never burneth; and thou, the Wind
that makes it burn;
O thou Wind, with my Fire playing, aye in me dwell:
I sought for then.
[27] Rückert avoids the name of Jesus; not so Von Hammer.
Thy Hand!
XXXII.
Lord, that I thee may find, O stretch to me thy Hand!
Close-clasped for ever, kind, O stretch to me thy hand!
O'er Earth it gathers dark, and ever deeper here
Where dim cross Footpaths wind, O stretch to me thy Hand!
The Malice of the World and deadly Hate I know;
Where the Danger grows defined, O stretch to me thy Hand!
The Pilgrim's Journey still is threatened by the Foe;
But to thwart the Ill designed, O stretch to me thy Hand!
O come, and let it press upon this burning Heart;
Though Tears my glad Eyes blind, O stretch to me thy Hand!
Fair Moon, up to thy Palace all shining, I would climb;
But lest I halt behind, O stretch to me thy hand!
The Priests
XXXIII.
Love called to Men from Heaven's bright Gate,
'Who look to God now, soon and late?'
''Tis we who look aloft to God,'
To Love replied the Priests elate.
Love cried 'How can ye look on high,
Who thus your Forms and Words inflate?
Ye cannot see where pure Light dwells,
So full your Eyes of Greed and Hate.
Your dark Deeds dim the Noontide's Ray;
Ye shame the Sun while thus ye prate.
The Grace that sits enthroned on high,
Can ne'er its Claim of Faith abate.
Nor can the Just One justly give
The Hearing which ye supplicate.
O ere ye look to Heaven again,
Put off all earthly Pride and State.
Your Hearts let Love, not Hatred, rule;
Then look to God, and on Him wait!'
The Pilgrims
XXXIV.
The Pilgrims hail the Kaaba's sacred Ground,
When they at last the holy Fane have found.
They see a House of Stone, sublime, revered,
All girt by steep and barren Cliffs around.
They march'd in Hope expecting God to see;
For this they toiled, and still their Prayers abound.
But when all fervent they the Threshold tread,
They hear a voice from out the Temple sound:
'Why pray ye thus, O Fools, to Clay and Stone?
Revere the House for which the Pure are bound.
The Heart's own House, Shrine of the True, the One:
O blest are they whose Striving there is crown'd!
Blest those who tread no Desert's weary Way,
But rest at Home in peace, like SHEMS renown'd.'[28]
[28] Rosen, whom I have followed in the last two lines, calls this 'an
incomparable Gazel.' Shems-ud-Din (The Sun of Religion) was Jeláleddín's
celebrated Teacher and revered Master, whose name he introduced into his
Gazels instead of his own, whence his Divan became entitled the 'Divan
of Shems of Tabriz.' Rückert, however, substitutes Jeláleddín's own
name, in accordance with Western usage and fact.
Many Faiths, One Lord
XXXV.
Our House has many Doors indeed,
But all to One Lord inward lead.
And all who reach this Lord must pray,
With Forehead on the Ground, and plead.
And many in the House born blind,
The Lord's commands yet hear and heed.
The Lame there too can Service give,
They all perform House Tasks at need.
Yea, even the Wind with panting Breath,
Comes in, the Hearth's low Fire to feed.
Each one must do his Part as bid,
No one can choose his Share or Deed.
Yet many deem them free, nor know
The Bond that binds them firm decreed.
But if thou humbly bear thy Bond,
It holds a Crown of Flowers in Seed.
Plight Troth, and Grace will answer Sure,
For Love's Vow seals the highest Creed.
Servant! To Fellow-servants shew
The lowly Mien no Hate will breed.
Forbearing be! Thy Over-Lord
No Pleasure hath in Pride or Greed.
Can one e'er claim to enter bold
Who Entrance never would concede?
Who dares to haggle with the Master,
He drives them from His Doors with Speed.
Love Absolute
XXXVI.
Love lies not in Book, or Letter, or well reason'd Tome—O no!
Love lives not in Cell of Penance, nor in gloomy Home—O no!
From the Green of Spring eternal shoots up the Tree of Life;
Yet Milkyway and Pleiad reach not Love's Dome—O no!
Reason dismounts before her, Desire her Charioteer;
So long the Way no slower to Love's Realm would come—O no!
While thou art still a Lover, the Longing in thee moves;
But when thou art the Loved One, thou need'st not roam—O no!
Wrecked Landsmen shriek in Terror, though saving spars float round;
The Pilot steeped in rapture, recks not Death's Foam—O no!
JELÁLEDDÍN, thy soul in Ocean melts in joy:
Thyself all Consecration, no Novice far from Home—O no!
Renunciation
XXXVII.
Since he to me his loving Heart has shown,
I give my Life to him, as All his own.
The Body's House becomes his Temple now,
Until the Soul herself to Heav'n hath flown.
The Earthly Life is Offering far too small;
Then let the Eternal, silent All atone.
JELÁLEDDÍN in self-negation found
The Rose of Life divinely fair, full blown.
All Fulness
XXXVIII.
Ever shall I more desire
Than Time's bounded Needs require.
Ever as more Flowers I pluck,
Blossoms new gay Spring attire.
And when through the Heavens I sweep,
Rolling Spheres will flash new Fire.
Perfect Beauty only can
True Eternal Love inspire.
Friendship
XXXIX.
The Rose is aye Love's dearest, sweetest Sign;
To my Friend's Heart, I give this Rose of mine.
Clear Thought dies out in Love's absorbed Delight,
As Weeds grow pale before the Rose and pine.
The Rose hides in her Heart the piercing Thorn,
For deepest hidden Pains with Love entwine.
The Rose is Beauty perfected in One,
Her Charms all glowing, Heaven and Earth outshine.
The full blown Rose in Splendour dims the Sun;
Each quivering Leaflet shows a Moon's design.
The Sun's sphered Light is moulded in her Form,
While bright-eyed Stars keep watch around her Shrine.
O Sun, the Rose that made the Moon to grow,
To my Heart's Friend give Love and Joy divine!
The Friend Supreme
XL.
O what a Friend is mine!
O what a burning Flame!
My Heart was parched and dead,
Till His Breath o'er me came.
When I before Him fled,
By Love's Keen Pang distressed;
He cried, Why dost thou flee?
Thou art thyself to blame.
At Night I asked the Moon,
Where hid my Moon still stayed?
She said, My Cheek grew pale,
In Fear when told His Name.
The Sun, when risen, I asked,
And why art thou so dim?
He said, My Eyelids dull
In Tears have veil'd their Shame.
And to the Sea I said,
Why canst thou not be still?
She answer'd, Deep Unrest
Will leave me ne'er the Same.
I cried to Fire, Flame Queen:
Why flickerest thou So?
On me, she cried, He looked,
And quench'd all Earthly Aim.
I shouted then, O Wind:
Why hurriest to and fro?
She gasped, His Breath consumes me,
Whene'er my Pace I tame!
But what in me, too, meaneth
This elemental Strife?
The Cup in my Hand shaketh,
And Fever thrills my Frame.
In Revel's Glow enraptured,
His Love I know my own:
Then, come, pour foaming Wine out,
Till o'er All flows His Name.
Immortality
XLI.
I am the Bird of Paradise;
And still my Nest is in the Skies.
I am the Spirit Falcon, flown
From Heav'n's Tent, where it open lies.
But in my eager Chase of Prey,
I fell to where new Sense Worlds rise.
I am the Hero of Mount Kaf,[29]
Who braves the Death the Weakling flies.
I look on high, until he call
Me home from this far Enterprise.
I look up steadfast, searching keen,
Until my Gaze the Throne descries.
There all secure my Nest bides near
The Tree of Life, where Nothing dies.
[29] Simurg. Also the name of the Phoenix (Von Hammer), but according
to Steingass, the Griffin.
The First and Last
XLII.
Thou art of all Man's Joys the Spring;
Life's honey'd Sweetness thou dost bring.
My gather'd Pearls, from Bosom full,
Before thy Feet my glad Hands fling.
The Souls love-moved, are circling on,
Like Streams to their great Ocean King.
Thou art the Sun of all Men's Thoughts;
Thy Kisses are the Flowers of Spring.
The Dawn is pale from yearning Love;
The Moon in Tears is sorrowing.
Thou art the Rose; and deep for thee,
In Sighs, the Nightingales still sing.
O can my Love me so despise,
That he my Heart with Pain can wring?
O Wine of Life, all fragrant, pour,
And soothe the Pain of Death's last Sting!
Mystic Love Dance
XLIII.
On with the Dance! We fly upon the Wings of Love;
We glow in all the Joys and scorn the Stings of Love.
I heard Love joyous calling from out the Realm of Death;
Lo! God hath drown'd dark Death now in living Springs of Love.
The Power of Life that loosen'd my Band when I was born,
That Hour my Mother gave me the Leading Strings of Love.
I asked Love's Self, fond nursing: How shall I Love escape?
She said: There is no Outlet from encircling Rings of Love.
Love's magic Mirror radiates a Thousand Worlds most fair;
And wondering Eyes look dazzled on all it brings of Love.
Thy Body's gold surrender to Love's refining Flames,
The Gold is Dross till boiling, all pure, it sings of Love.
I tell thee why the Ocean aye tosses glittering Spray:
It dances and it glances with Gems, Playthings of Love.
I tell thee how was Mankind a-formed from Earthy Dust:
God in the Dust inbreathèd sweet Whisperings of Love.
I tell thee why the Heavens for ever circle round:
God's Throne set in the Centre, draws All on Wings of Love.
I tell thee why the Zephyr at Morn so softly blows:
To flutter every Leaflet with the Kiss it flings of Love.
I tell thee why Night hideth in Veil so dark her Face:
She makes the World a bridal Tent, and darkling sings of Love.
I can divine all Riddles Creation puts to me,
For to her Riddles Ever, Man the Answer brings of Love.
Dream Fear
XLIV.
O Love, the Realm of Dreams
Is thine; they come, unsought:
With fiery Weapons, throng'd,
As if whole Armies fought.
The Standard of thy Rule,
Hot Hearts bear in the Van;
It flames till Worlds, o'ercome,
Beneath thy Sway are brought.
Thou, ever and again,
Sendst out a Phantom Form;
Till cower weak, trembling Souls,
Like Children terror-wrought.
But when a Soul resigns,
Thou, Victor, marchest in:
A Conqueror—lovelier far
Than ever Soul had thought.
The Cry of Love
XLV.
My Soul sends up to Heaven each Night the Cry of Love!
Hu! Hu![30]
God's starry Beauty draws with Might the Cry of Love!
Hu! Ya!
Bright Sun and Moon each Morn dance in my Heart at Dawn;
And waking me in Daylight, excite the Cry of Love!
On every Meadow glancing, I see God's Sunbeams play;
And all Creation's Wonders incite the Cry of Love!
The Turtledove embowered, awakened by my Call,
Returns to me in coo'd Delight, the Cry of Love!
Gu! Gu!
The Crag on whose bare Forehead thy Light in Glory falls,
Resounds in Echoes clear, aright the Cry of Love!
Men! Hu!
For all the Flowers sweet blowing in timid Silence there,
For deaf Worms, too, I offer God's Rite, the Cry of Love!
The Ocean's speechless Billows sound ever loud thy Praise;
And all in rolling Anthems recite the Cry of Love!
To thee for every Rosebud and every Dewdrop fair,
And every Gem, deep hidden, I plight the Cry of Love!
Hu! Ya!
I, All in All becoming, now clear see God in All;
And up for Union yearning, takes Flight the Cry of Love!
Hu! Hu!
[30] Rückert does not give these Exclamations, but Von Hammer does.
Hu!=HE!
Night Thought
XLVI.
Sleep not, O Thought, my Guest—the livelong Night!
I bring thee Friendship's best—the livelong Night!
Thou, like an Angel's Breath, from Heaven hast come,
To heal me while I rest—the livelong Night!
Banish dull Slumber, let Heaven's Mystery sing,
From out his secret Nest—the livelong Night!
Shine clear, ye circling Stars, that in your Rays,
The Soul its Vision test—the livelong Night!
Ye Diamonds, sparkling in your dark Retreats,
Rival the starry West—the livelong Night!
Soar up, O Eagle, Sunwards—higher, higher!
Be still thy Flight up pressed—the livelong Night!
Thank God, the World now sleeps; alone are God
And I, all God-possess'd—the livelong Night!
The Night is calm and deep, and Heaven's own Lyre,
Sounds soft, as Star-caress'd—the livelong Night!
War's Turmoil whirling through the starry Streets,
New spheral Choirs attest—the livelong Night!
With Lion, Bull, and Ram, all warlike gleam
Orion's Sword and Crest—the livelong Night!
Scorpion and Dragon seize the Crown, while weeps
The Virgin sore opprest—the livelong Night!
My Tongue sinks dumb with rapture, drunk with Love;
Now, Thought, brood, silent, blest—the livelong Night!
Up out of Night
XLVII.
O for Wings to Heaven to soar—
Up out of Night!
A Heart to Struggle to Light's Shore—
Up out of Night!
Lo! How God's Messengers of Love,
In dancing Dawn:
In Life and Light new Worlds restore,
Up out of Night!
See in the West how Daylight there,
Slow Sinking down:
Looks back, with Love all blushing sore,
Up out of Night!
And now in East where she again,
Doth rise all fair;
Blooms Rose Dawn, brightening as of yore,
Up out of Night!
Time's Memories clear and Life's bright Hopes
Together twine:
Hands loving stretch to us once more,
Up out of Night!
The Eternal Stars all sparkling ope
Their radiant Eyes;
And flash anew deep Wisdom's Lore,
Up out of Night!
And ere Heavens full-blown Rose shall fade,
The endless Day
Shall rise in Bliss at thy Heart's Core,
Up out of Night!
O Nightingale that woos for aye
The Heavenly Rose:
Now, now thy deepest Love Notes pour,
Up out of Night!
All One
XLVIII.
I looked around, and saw in all Heaven's Spaces: One!
In Ocean's rippling Waves and billowy Races: One!
I looked into the Heart, and saw a Sea, wide Worlds
All full of Dreams, and in all Dreaming Faces: One!
Thou art the First, the Last, the Outer, Inner, Whole:
Thy Light breaks through in all Earth's Hues and Graces: One!
Thou seest All from East to furthest Bound of West,
And lo! each Leaf and Flower and Tree Crown traces: One!
Four wild and restive Steeds draw on the World's vast Car;
Thou bridlest them, and rul'st in all their Paces: One!
Air, Fire, Earth, Water melt to One in Fear of thee;
Nor struggle wild, but show in close Embraces: One!
The Hearts of all that live in Earth and Heav'n above,
Beat Praise to thee; nor fails in all their Places—One.
O Wake in Me
XLIX.
When all the World has gone to rest,
O Wake in Me!
When tired Eyes close by Sleep opprest,
O Wake in Me!
When Eyes in Heaven all sleepless watch
with Starry gaze,
Make my blind Orbs thy Home as Guest,
O Wake in Me!
When all my outer Gates of Sense,
are shut and bar'd;
Lest, lone, my Soul be fear-possest,
O Wake in Me!
That no grim Power of Darkness through
the Gloom around,
My deeper Peace and Calm molest,
O Wake in Me!
From Eden's Garden still soft blown,
That fragrant Air
The healing Tree of Life attest,
O Wake in Me!
That once, at least in Dream, Life's Good
be here attained,
The Heart no more by pain distrest,
O Wake in Me!
In the moist Midnight dank and drear,
where Shadows creep,
Lest Passions vile my Heart infest,
O Wake in Me!
And when Life's Night is gone, and Love's
new dawning Smile
Woos me for ever to thy Breast,
O Wake in Me!
Jeláleddín
L.
Highest Love, where thou art thronèd, here before Thy Throne unseen,
O let me pour my Melodies, my sweetest, highest yet, I ween.
If well-pleasing they ascending reach Thine ear in tones of power,
All their work of soul-subduing comes from Thy own soul serene.
Let them hymn and let them praise thee: let them cry and supplicate:
Where is he to Earth descended, Star from out thy Glory's Sheen?
He his Head with thy soft Roses wreathed, and struck the charmèd String,
Till drunk with Love he passed sweet playing to the Light no cloud
can screen.
He beclad in Garments waving here on broken Pillar leaned,
Pouring Songs by which upwafted he hath left this lower Scene.
Hath he now flown to Thy Bosom? Tell me, Love, who here below
Didst his Soul so sweetly cherish, where still cherished hath he been?—
Where the Peoples sink their Banners, where Pride lays her Signs aside,
All their Caste Distinctions blending, where eternal Peace is Queen.
There among the Saints, the purest, of all Zones, is he now found:
Hail! All hail his Memory holy: MAULĀNĀ JELÁL-ED-DÍN!
Notes.
_A._
SIR WILLIAM JONES ON THE MYSTICAL POETRY OF THE PERSIANS.
1. _Epitome of the Mystical System._—The Persian (and Hindu) mystical
Poets 'concur in believing that the souls of men differ infinitely in
_degree_, but not at all in _kind_, from the divine Spirit, of which
they are particles, and in which they will ultimately be absorbed; that
the spirit of God pervades the universe, always immediately present to
his work, and consequently always in substance; that he alone is perfect
benevolence, perfect truth, perfect beauty; that the love of him alone
is real and genuine love, while that of all other objects is absurd and
illusory; that the beauties of Nature are faint resemblances, like
images in a mirror, of the divine charms; that, from eternity without
beginning to eternity without end, the supreme benevolence is occupied
in bestowing happiness or the means of attaining it; that men can only
attain it by performing their part of the _primal covenant_ between them
and the Creator; that nothing has a pure absolute existence, but _mind_
or _spirit_; that material substances, as the ignorant call them, are no
more than gay _pictures_ presented continually to our minds by the
Sempiternal Artist; that we must beware of attachment to such phantoms,
and attach ourselves exclusively to God, who truly exists in us, as we
exist solely in him; that we retain, even in this forlorn state of
separation from our beloved, _the idea of heavenly beauty_, and _the
remembrance of our primeval vows_; that sweet music, gentle breezes,
fragrant flowers, perpetually renew the primary _idea_, refresh our
fading memory, and melt us with tender affections; that we must cherish
those affections, and by abstracting our souls from vanity, that is,
from all but God, approximate to his essence, in our final union with
which will consist our supreme beatitude. From these principles flow a
thousand metaphors and poetical figures, which abound in the sacred
poems of the Persians and Hindus.'
2. _The poetical Imagery._—'Many zealous admirers of Hafiz insist, that
by _Wine_ he invariably means _devotion_; and they have gone so far as
to compose a Dictionary of Words in the _Language_, as they call it, of
the Súfis. In that vocabulary _sleep_ is explained by _meditation_ on
the divine perfections, and _perfume_ by _hope_ of the divine favour;
_gales_ are _illapses_ of grace; _kisses_ and _embraces_, the _raptures_
of piety; _idolaters_, _infidels_, and _libertines_ are men of the
purest _religion_, and their _idol_ is the Creator Himself; the _tavern_
is a retired Oratory, and its _keeper_ a sage instructor; _beauty_
denotes the _perfection_ of the Supreme Being; _tresses_ are the
_expansion_ of his glory; _lips_, the hidden mysteries of his essence;
_down_ on the cheek, the world of spirits, who encircle his throne; and
a _black mole_, the point of indivisible unity; lastly, _wantonness_,
_mirth_, and _ebriety_, mean religious ardour and abstraction from all
terrestrial thoughts.'—Sir William Jones' _Works_, vol. iv. pp. 219, 227.
_B_.
HEGEL ON THE CHARACTER OF THE PERSIAN LYRICAL POETRY.
Continuing the exposition quoted on p. xxi., Hegel goes on to
say:—
'In Sublimity proper, the best objects and the most splendid forms are
used only as a mere ornament of God, and they serve to proclaim the
magnificence and glory of the One, being brought before our eyes only to
glorify Him as the Lord of all creatures. But in Pantheism, on the
contrary, the Immanence of the Divine in the objects, raises the
mundane, natural, and human existence itself, to a more substantial
glory of its own. The actual Life of the Spiritual in the phenomena of
Nature and in human relationships, animates and spiritualises them in
themselves, and establishes in turn a special relation of the subjective
feeling and soul of the Poet to the objects of which he sings. His soul,
filled with this living glory, is in itself calm, independent, free,
self-sufficient, spacious, large; and in this affirmative identity with
itself, it expands its life in imagination till it attains to the same
calm unity in the Soul of things. And so it coalesces with the objects
of Nature and their magnificence, becomes one with the loved one, with
the cup-bearer, etc.;—in a word, with all that is worthy of praise and
of love, and this in the most blissful and joyous intimacy. The
Occidental Romantic inwardness of Soul shews, indeed, a similar
consciousness of Life in itself; but on the whole—especially in the
North—it is more unhappy, is not free, is given to yearning; or it
remains more subjectively shut up in itself, and thereby becomes selfish
and sensitive. Such oppressed, disturbed inner states of mind are
especially expressed in the National Songs of barbarous peoples. The
state of free, joyous inwardness is, on the contrary, characteristic of
the Orientals, especially of the Mohammedan Persians, who openly and
gladly give up their whole Self to God, as well as to all that is
praiseworthy, yet in this very surrender preserve their essential free
being, which they can maintain even in relation to the surrounding
world. Thus we see in their glow of passion the most expansive
blissfulness and outpouring of feeling; and with their inexhaustible
wealth of brilliant and magnificent images, through it all there sound
the constant tones of happiness, of beauty, and of joy. When the
Oriental suffers and is unhappy, he accepts it as the immutable decree
of Fate, and in presence of it still remains certain in himself, without
becoming depressed, or feeling sensitive, or despondent, or distressed.
In the poems of Hafiz we find complaining and repining enough about the
loved one, the wine-bringer, etc.; but even in his Pain he remains as
free from care as in his Joy. Thus he sings:
'"Because the Presence of thy Friend
Is bright, not sad;
Burn, like the Taper, out in Woe,
Still grateful, glad."
'The taper teaches man to laugh and weep; it laughs in bright glances
through the flame, although it is melting at the same time in hot tears;
even in burning itself out, it sheds a bright glance around. This is the
general character of the whole of this Poetry.
'To cite some of their more special images: the Persian Poets speak much
of Flowers and Precious Stones, and especially of the Rose and the
Nightingale. It is very common for them to represent the Nightingale as
the "Bridegroom" of the Rose. This attributing of a Soul to the Rose and
of Love to the Nightingale, occurs frequently in Hafiz. "O Rose," he
says, "while grateful for being the Sultana of Beauty, vouchsafe not to
be proud to the Love of the Nightingale." He speaks himself of the
Nightingale of his own Heart. But when we speak in our Poetry of Roses,
Nightingales, and Wine, it is done in a quite other and more prosaic
sense: the Rose is regarded as for ornament; we are "crowned with
Roses"; or we hear the Nightingale and sympathise with it; we drink
Wine, and call it the Dispeller of Care. With the Persian Poets,
however, the Rose is not an image, or a symbol, or a mere ornament; but
it actually appears to the Poet as animated with a Soul, as a loving
Bride; and he penetrates with his spirit deep into the Soul of the Rose.'
_C._
VON HAMMER'S ACCOUNT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM.
Von Hammer's Account of Omar Khayyám is at once so just, so
discriminating, and so well-informed that it may prove interesting to
our Readers, especially as the work in which it is contained has become
rare; and it may help generally to dispel some of the hallucination
still prevalent about the 'Astronomer-Poet of Persia':
'Omar Chiam'—as Von Hammer transliterates the name—'is one of the most
remarkable Persian Poets; he is unique as regards the irreligious
subject-matter of his Poems, so that, so far as we know, there is no
other found like him in the whole History of Persian Poetry. He is the
Poet of the Freethinkers and of the Jesters at Religion, and in this
respect he may be appropriately called the Voltaire of Persian Poetry.
It is remarkable too, that in Persia, as elsewhere, Freethinking was the
precursor of Mysticism, and that the Age of the deepest Unbelief passed
over into that of the greatest Superstition.
'Omar Chiam, born at Nishapur, was one of the greatest Astronomers of
his time; he shared the fame of Nassireddin and Ulugbeg. But Astronomy
led him not to the knowledge, but to the denial, of the Supreme Being;
and he embodied the result of his sceptical meditations in Quatrains,
which have become famous under the title: _Rubayat Omar Chiam_. In his
youth he was at school with Nisamol-Mulk, who became afterwards the
Grand Vizier of Melekshah, and with Hassan Sabbah, the Founder of the
Order of the Assassins. In the bloody prescriptions of his Order, Hassan
practically sealed the doctrinal Unbelief which Omar Chiam proclaimed in
his Verses; and as its Grand master, he sacrificed his old schoolfellow,
the Grand Vizier, to his revenge, because he continued to follow the
path of Right and Virtue. Omar Chiam, as the friend of Hassan Sabbah, is
supposed to have helped him to found his diabolical Doctrine and his
diabolical Society.'
So far Von Hammer. We commend his last statement to the serious
consideration of the amiable Devotees of the new Red-letter Cult of our
fashionable OMAR KHAYYÁM SOCIETIES AND CLUBS! The remarks on this
subject in our Introduction apply, of course, only to _Fitzgerald's_
Omar, of whom he takes a low view—very pithily summed up by himself in
this phrase: 'the burden of Omar's Song—if not "Let us eat"—is
_assuredly_—"Let us drink, for To-morrow we die!"' As regards the _real_
Omar, whom Mr. Fitzgerald did not rightly understand, our view agrees
generally with that of Von Hammer and M. Nicolas, but it need not be
discussed here. The phenomenal success of Mr. Fitzgerald's Version in
recent years has been largely due to the witchery and glamour of his
Versification. His lasting achievement—and it is not a small one—is to
have thoroughly popularised the Quatrain. We now hear it echoed
everywhere, and in all sorts of connections, even the most trivial. It
has recently been applied, with amusing ingenuity, to the Game of Golf,
and even to the translation of Homer by Mr. Mackail. But the most
deliciously ridiculous thing of the kind in the connection, yet seen, is
Baron Corvo's Translation of M. Nicolas—'_Risum teneatis, Amici?_'
These effusions are, after all, only amusing manifestations of the Omar
Khayyám Distemper. It has, however, unhappily a deeper significance. Mr.
Fitzgerald's success has arisen mainly from his playing into the
_pessimistic and cynical mood_ of the time, and here lies its moral
danger, especially to young, unguarded and unthinking, readers. Let them
be assured that all this is bad thought, bad taste, bad effort. The
_Byronic_ mood is not only unhealthy, but is critically antiquated, and
cannot be permanently recalled in any relation whatever. Better—much
better—than this is the healthy, if somewhat rabid, physical progression
of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, even to 'ride with the reckless seraphim on the
brim of a red-maned star'! If they will not take it from us, let them
listen to the powerful and earnest words of a lofty, original, spiritual
thinker with which he corrected the kindred morbid tendencies of his
day, and which are again singularly relevant here. Says Professor
Ferrier in a noble and indignant outburst: 'These aberrations betoken a
perverse and prurient play of the abnormal fancy—groping for the very
holy of holies in kennels running with the most senseless and
God-abandoned abominations. Our natural superstitions are bad enough;
but thus to make a systematic business of fatuity, imposture, and
profanity, and to imagine, all the while, that we are touching on the
precincts of God's Spiritual Kingdom, is unspeakably shocking. The
horror and disgrace of such proceedings were never even approached in
the darkest days of heathendom and idolatry. Ye who make shattered
nerves and depraved sensations the interpreters of truth—ye who
inaugurate disease as the prophet of all wisdom, thus making sin, death,
and the devil, the lords paramount of the creation—have ye bethought
yourselves of the backward and downward course which ye are running into
the pit of the bestial and the abhorred? Oh, ye miserable mystics! when
will ye know that all God's truths and all man's blessings lie in the
broad health, in the trodden ways, and in the laughing sunshine of the
universe, and that all intellect, all genius, is merely _the power of
seeing wonders in common things_!'
With this impressive appeal we pause, for the present. The standpoint
and genius of Jeláleddín could not possibly be better expressed than in
Ferrier's closing words.
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