{"id":8915,"date":"2014-01-12T10:07:49","date_gmt":"2014-01-12T15:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/?p=8915"},"modified":"2014-01-12T10:07:49","modified_gmt":"2014-01-12T15:07:49","slug":"persian-poetry-by-ralph-waldo-emerson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/persian-poetry-by-ralph-waldo-emerson\/","title":{"rendered":"PERSIAN POETRY BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON"},"content":{"rendered":"

PERSIan POETRY BY\u00a0RALPH WALDO EMERSON<\/span><\/p>\n

AN POETRYTo Baron Von Hammer-Purgstall, who died in Vienna in 1856, we owe our best knowledge of the Persians. He has translated into German, besides the \u201cDivan\u201d of Hafiz, specimens of two hundred poets, who wrote during a period of five and a half centuries, from A.D. 1050 to 1600. The seven masters of the Persian Parnassus\u2014Firdousi, Enweri, Nisami, Dschelaleddin, Saadi, Hafiz, and Dschami[D]\u2014have ceased to be empty names; and others, like Ferideddin Attar and Omar Chiam, promise to rise in Western estimation. That for which mainly books exist is communicated in<\/span><\/p>\n

these rich extracts. Many qualities go to make a good telescope,\u2014as the largeness of the field, facility of sweeping the meridian, achromatic purity of lenses, and so forth,\u2014but the one eminent value is the space penetrating power; and there are many virtues in books,\u2014but the essential value is the adding of knowledge to our stock, by the record of new facts, and, better, by the record of intuitions, which distribute facts, and are the formulas which supersede all histories. [Pg 104]<\/p>\n

Oriental life and society, especially in the Southern nations, stand in violent contrast with the multitudinous detail, the secular stability, and the vast average of comfort of the Western nations. Life in the East is fierce, short, hazardous, and in extremes. Its elements are few and simple, not exhibiting the long range and undulation of European existence, but rapidly reaching the best and the worst. The rich feed on fruits and game,\u2014the poor on a watermelon\u2019s peel. All or nothing is the genius of Oriental life. Favour of the Sultan, or his displeasure, is a question of Fate. A war is undertaken for an epigram or a distich, as in Europe for a duchy. The prolific sun, and the sudden and rank plenty which his heat engenders, make subsistence easy. On the other side, the desert, the simoom, the mirage, the lion, and the plague endanger it, and life hangs on the contingency of a skin of water more or less. The very geography of old Persia showed these contrasts. \u201cMy father\u2019s empire,\u201d said Cyrus to Xenophon, \u201cis so large, that people perish with cold, at one extremity, whilst they are suffocated with heat, at the other.\u201d The temperament of the people agrees with this life in extremes. [Pg 105] Religion and poetry are all their civilization. The religion teaches an inexorable Destiny. It distinguishes only two days in each man\u2019s history\u2014his birthday, called the Day of the Lot, and the Day of Judgment. Courage and absolute submission to what is appointed him are his virtues.<\/p>\n

The favour of the climate making subsistence easy and encouraging an outdoor life, allows to the Eastern nations a highly intellectual organization,\u2014leaving out of view, at present, the genius of the Hindoos (more Oriental in every sense), whom no people have surpassed in the grandeur of their ethical statement. The Persians and the Arabs, with great leisure and few books, are exquisitely sensible to the pleasures of poetry. Layard has given some details of the effect which the improvvisatori produced on the children of the desert. \u201cWhen the bard improvised an amatory ditty, the young chief\u2019s excitement was almost beyond control. The other Bedouins were scarcely less moved by these rude measures, which have the same kind of effect on the wild tribes of the Persian mountains. Such verses, chanted by their self-taught poets, or by the girls of their encampment, will drive warriors to the combat, fearless of death, or prove an ample reward, on their return from the dangers of the ghazon, or the fight. [Pg 106] The excitement they produce exceeds that of the grape. He who would understand the influence of the Homeric ballads in the heroic ages should witness the effect which similar compositions have upon the wild nomads of the East.\u201d Elsewhere he adds, \u201cPoetry and flowers are the wine and spirits of the Arab; a couplet is equal to a bottle, and a rose to a dram, without the evil effect of either.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Persian poetry rests on a mythology whose few legends are connected with the Jewish history, and the anterior traditions of the Pentateuch. The principal figure in the allusions of Eastern poetry is Solomon. Solomon had three talismans; first, the signet-ring, by which he commanded the spirits, on the stone of which was engraven the name of God; second, the glass, in which he saw the secrets of his enemies, and the causes of all things, figured; the third, the east-wind, which was his horse. His counsellor was Simorg, king of birds, the all-wise fowl, who had lived ever since the beginning of the world, and now lives alone on the highest summit of Mount Kaf. No fowler has taken him, and none now living has seen him. By him Solomon was taught the language of birds, so that he heard secrets whenever he went into his gardens. [Pg 107] When Solomon travelled, the throne was placed on a carpet of green silk, of a length and breadth sufficient for all his army to stand upon,\u2014men placing themselves on his right hand, and the spirits on his left. When all were in order, the east-wind, at his command, took up the carpet and transported it, with all that were upon it, whither he pleased,\u2014the army of birds at the same time flying overhead, and forming a canopy to shade them from the sun. It is related that when the Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon, he had built, against her arrival, a palace, of which the floor or pavement was of glass, laid over running water, in which fish were swimming. The Queen of Sheba was deceived thereby, and raised her robes, thinking she was to pass through the water. On the occasion of Solomon\u2019s marriage, all the beasts, laden with presents, appeared before his throne. Behind them all came the ant, with a blade of grass: Solomon did not despise the gift of the ant. Asaph, the vizier, at a certain time, lost the seal of Solomon, which one of the Dews, or evil spirits, found, and, governing in the name of Solomon, deceived the people.<\/p>\n

Firdousi, the Persian Homer, has written in the Shah Nameh the annals of the fabulous and heroic kings of the country: [Pg 108] of Karum (the Persian Cr\u0153sus), the immeasurably rich gold-maker, who, with all his treasures, lies buried not far from the Pyramids, in the sea which bears his name; of Jamschid, the binder of demons, whose reign lasted seven hundred years; of Kai Kaus, in whose palace, built by demons on Alburz, gold and silver and precious stones were used so lavishly, that in the brilliancy produced by their combined effect, night and day appeared the same; of Afrasiyab, strong as an elephant, whose shadow extended for miles, whose heart was bounteous as the ocean, and his hands like the clouds when rain falls to gladden the earth. The crocodile in the rolling stream had no safety from Afrasiyab. Yet when he came to fight against the generals of Kaus, he was but an insect in the grasp of Rustem, who seized him by the girdle, and dragged him from his horse. Rustem felt such anger at the arrogance of the King of Mazinderan, that every hair on his body started up like a spear. The gripe of his hand cracked the sinews of an enemy.<\/p>\n

These legends,\u2014with Chiser, the fountain of life, Tuba, the tree of life,\u2014the romances of the loves of Leila and Medschun, of Chosru and Schirin, and those of the nightingale for the rose,\u2014pearl-diving, and the virtues of gems,\u2014the cohol, the cosmetic by which pearls and eyebrows are indelibly stained black,\u2014the bladder in which musk is brought,\u2014the down of the lip, the mole on the cheek, the eyelash,\u2014lilies, roses, tulips and jasmines,\u2014make the staple imagery of Persian odes. [Pg 109]<\/p>\n

The Persians have epics and tales, but, for the most part, they affect short poems and epigrams. Gnomic verses, rules of life conveyed in a lively image, especially in an image addressed to the eye, and contained in a single stanza, were always current in the East; and if the poem is long, it is only a string of unconnected verses. They use an inconsecutiveness quite alarming to Western logic, and the connection between the stanzas of their longer odes is much like that between the refrain of our old English ballads,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,\u201d<\/p>\n

or<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rain it raineth every day,\u201d<\/p>\n

and the main story.<\/p>\n

Take, as specimens of these gnomic verses, the following:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cThe secret that should not be blown
\nNot one of thy nation must know;
\nYou may padlock the gate of a town,
\nBut never the mouth of a foe.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Pg 110]<\/p>\n

Or this of Omar Chiam:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cOn earth\u2019s wide thoroughfares below
\nTwo only men contented go:
\nWho knows what\u2019s right and what\u2019s forbid,
\nAnd he from whom is knowledge hid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is a poem on a melon, by Adsched of Meru:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cColour, taste, and smell, smaragdus, sugar and musk,\u2014
\nAmber for the tongue, for the eye a picture rare,\u2014
\nIf you cut the fruit in slices, every slice a crescent fair,\u2014
\nIf you leave it whole, the full harvest moon is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hafiz is the prince of Persian poets, and in his extraordinary gifts adds to some of the attributes of Pindar, Anacreon, Horace, and Burns the insight of a mystic, that sometimes affords a deeper glance at Nature than belongs to either of these bards. He accosts all topics with an easy audacity. \u201cHe only,\u201d he says, \u201cis fit for company, who knows how to prize earthly happiness at the value of a nightcap. Our father Adam sold Paradise for two kernels of wheat; then blame me not if I hold it dear at one grapestone.\u201d He says to the Shah, \u201cThou who rulest after words and thoughts which no ear has heard and no mind has thought, abide firm until thy young destiny tears off his blue coat from the old graybeard of the sky.\u201d [Pg 111] He says:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cI batter the wheel of heaven
\nWhen it rolls not rightly by;
\nI am not one of the snivellers,
\nWho fall thereon and die.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rapidity of his turns is always surprising us:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cSee how the roses burn!
\nBring wine to quench the fire!
\nAlas! the flames come up with us,\u2014
\nWe perish with desire.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the manner of his nation, he abounds in pregnant sentences which might be engraved on a sword-blade and almost on a ring. \u201cIn honour dies he to whom the great seems ever wonderful.\u201d \u201cHere is the sum, that, when one door opens, another shuts.\u201d \u201cOn every side is an ambush laid by the robber-troops of circumstance; hence it is that the horseman of life urges on his courser at headlong speed.\u201d \u201cThe earth is a host who murders his guests.\u201d \u201cGood is what goes on the road of Nature. On the straight way the traveller never misses.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Pg 112]<\/p>\n

\u201cAlas! till now I had not known
\nMy guide and Fortune\u2019s guide are one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe understanding\u2019s copper coin
\nCounts not with the gold of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2019Tis writ on Paradise\u2019s gate,
\n\u2018Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world is a bride superbly dressed;
\nWho weds her for dowry must pay his soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLoose the knots of the heart; never think on thy fate;
\nNo Euclid has yet disentangled that snarl.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere resides in the grieving
\nA poison to kill;
\nBeware to go near them,
\n\u2019Tis pestilent still.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harems and wine-shops only give him a new ground of observation, whence to draw sometimes a deeper moral than regulated sober life affords,\u2014and this is foreseen:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cI will be drunk and down with wine;
\nTreasures we find in a ruined house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riot, he thinks, can snatch from the deeply hidden lot the veil that covers it:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be wise the dull brain so earnestly throbs,
\nBring bands of wine for the stupid head.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Pg 113]<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Builder of heaven
\nHath sundered the earth,
\nSo that no footway
\nLeads out of it forth.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn turnpikes of wonder
\nWine leads the mind forth,
\nStraight, sidewise, and upward,
\nWest, southward, and north.<\/p>\n

\u201cStands the vault adamantine
\nUntil the Doomsday;
\nThe wine-cup shall ferry
\nThee o\u2019er it away.\u201d<\/p>\n

That hardihood and self-equality of every sound nature, which result from the feeling that the spirit in him is entire and as good as the world, which entitle the poet to speak with authority, and make him an object of interest, and his every phrase and syllable significant, are in Hafiz, and abundantly fortify and ennoble his tone.<\/p>\n

His was the fluent mind in which every thought and feeling came readily to the lips. \u201cLoose the knots of the heart,\u201d he says. We absorb elements enough, but have not leaves and lungs for healthy perspiration and growth. An air of sterility, of incompetence to their proper aims, belongs to many who have both experience and wisdom. But a large utterance, [Pg 114] a river that makes its own shores, quick perception and corresponding expression, a constitution to which every morrow is a new day, which is equal to the needs of life, at once tender and bold, with great arteries,\u2014this generosity of ebb and flow satisfies, and we should be willing to die when our time comes, having had our swing and gratification. The difference is not so much in the quality of men\u2019s thoughts as in the power of uttering them. What is pent and smouldered in the dumb actor is not pent in the poet, but passes over into new form, at once relief and creation.<\/p>\n

The other merit of Hafiz is his intellectual liberty, which is a certificate of profound thought. We accept the religions and politics into which we fall; and it is only a few delicate spirits who are sufficient to see that the whole web of convention is the imbecility of those whom it entangles,\u2014that the mind suffers no religion and no empire but its own. It indicates this respect to absolute truth by the use it makes of the symbols that are most stable and reverend, and therefore is always provoking the accusation of irreligion.<\/p>\n

Hypocrisy is the perpetual butt of his arrows.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet us draw the cowl through the brook of wine.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Pg 115]<\/p>\n

He tells his mistress that not the dervis, or the monk, but the lover, has in his heart the spirit which makes the ascetic and the saint; and certainly not their cowls and mummeries, but her glances, can impart to him the fire and virtue needful for such self-denial. Wrong shall not be wrong to Hafiz, for the name\u2019s sake. A law or statute is to him what a fence is to a nimble school-boy,\u2014a temptation for a jump. \u201cWe would do nothing but good, else would shame come to us on the day when the soul must hie hence; and should they then deny us Paradise, the Houris themselves would forsake that, and come out to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

His complete intellectual emancipation he communicates to the reader. There is no example of such facility of allusion, such use of all materials. Nothing is too high, nothing too low, for his occasion. He fears nothing, he stops for nothing. Love is a leveller, and Allah becomes a groom, and heaven a closet, in his daring hymns to his mistress or to his cupbearer. This boundless charter is the right of genius.<\/p>\n

We do not wish to strew sugar on bottled spiders, or try to make mystical divinity out of the Song of Solomon, much less out of the erotic and bacchanalian songs of Hafiz. Hafiz himself is determined to defy all such hypocritical interpretation, and tears off his turban and throws it at the head of the meddling dervis, and throws his glass after the turban. [Pg 116] But the love or the wine of Hafiz is not to be confounded with vulgar debauch. It is the spirit in which the song is written that imports, and not the topics. Hafiz praises wine, roses, maidens, boys, birds, mornings, and music, to give vent to his immense hilarity and sympathy with every form of beauty and joy; and lays the emphasis on these to mark his scorn of sanctimony and base prudence. These are the natural topics and language of his wit and perception. But it is the play of wit and the joy of song that he loves; and if you mistake him for a low rioter, he turns short on you with verses which express the poverty of sensual joys, and to ejaculate with equal fire the most unpalatable affirmations of heroic sentiment and contempt for the world. Sometimes it is a glance from the height of thought, as thus:\u2014\u201cBring wine; for, in the audience-hall of the soul\u2019s independence, what is sentinel or Sultan? what is the wise man or the intoxicated?\u201d And sometimes his feast, feasters, and world are only one pebble more in the eternal vortex and revolution of Fate:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cI am; what I am
\nMy dust will be again.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Pg 117]<\/p>\n

A saint might lend an ear to the riotous fun of Falstaff; for it is not created to excite the animal appetites, but to vent the joy of a supernal intelligence. In all poetry, Pindar\u2019s rule holds,\u2014\u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c2 \u03c6\u03c9\u03bd\u03b5\u03af, it speaks to the intelligent; and Hafiz is a poet for poets, whether he write, as sometimes, with a parrot\u2019s, or, as at other times, with an eagle\u2019s quill.<\/p>\n

Every song of Hafiz affords new proof of the unimportance of your subject to success, provided only the treatment be cordial. In general, what is more tedious than dedications or panegyrics addressed to grandees? Yet in the \u201cDivan\u201d you would not skip them, since his muse seldom supports him better.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat lovelier forms things wear,
\nNow that the Shah comes back!\u201d<\/p>\n

And again:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cThy foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down,
\nPoises Arcturus aloft morning and evening his spear.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is told of Hafiz, that, when he had written a compliment to a handsome youth,\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cTake my heart in thy hand, O beautiful boy of Shiraz!
\nI would give for the mole on thy cheek Samarcand and Buchara!\u201d\u2014<\/p>\n

[Pg 118]<\/p>\n

the verses came to the ear of Timour in his palace. Timour taxed Hafiz with treating disrespectfully his two cities, to raise and adorn which he had conquered nations. Hafiz replied, \u201cAlas, my lord, if I had not been so prodigal, I had not been so poor!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Persians had a mode of establishing copyright the most secure of any contrivance with which we are acquainted. The law of the ghaselle, or shorter ode, requires that the poet insert his name in the last stanza. Almost every one of several hundreds of poems of Hafiz contains his name thus interwoven more or less closely with the subject of the piece. It is itself a test of skill, as this self-naming is not quite easy. We remember but two or three examples in English poetry; that of Chaucer, in the \u201cHouse of Fame\u201d: Jonson\u2019s epitaph on his son,\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cBen Jonson his best piece of poetry\u201d:<\/p>\n

and Cowley\u2019s,\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cThe melancholy Cowley lay.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it is easy to Hafiz. It gives him the opportunity of the most playful self-assertion, always gracefully, sometimes almost in the fun of Falstaff, sometimes with feminine delicacy. He tells us, \u201cThe angels in heaven were lately learning his last pieces.\u201d He says, [Pg 119] \u201cThe fishes shed their pearls, out of desire and longing as soon as the ship of Hafiz swims the deep.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOut of the East, out of the West, no man understands me;
\nO, the happier I, who confide to none but the wind!
\nThis morning heard I how the lyre of the stars resounded,
\n\u2018Sweeter tones have we heard from Hafiz!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Again,\u2014\u201cI heard the harp of the planet Venus, and it said in the early morning, \u2018I am the disciple of the sweet-voiced Hafiz!\u2019\u201d And again,\u2014\u201cWhen Hafiz sings, the angels hearken, and Anaitis, the leader of the starry host, calls even the Messiah in heaven out to the dance.\u201d \u201cNo one has unveiled thoughts like Hafiz, since the locks of the Word-bride were first curled.\u201d \u201cOnly he despises the verse of Hafiz who is not himself by nature noble.\u201d<\/p>\n

But we must try to give some of these poetic flourishes the metrical form which they seem to require:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cFit for the Pleiad\u2019s azure chord
\nThe songs I sung, the pearls I bored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cI have no hoarded treasure,
\nYet have I rich content;
\nThe first from Allah to the Shah,
\nThe last to Hafiz went.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Pg 120]<\/p>\n

Another:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh heart, O Hafiz! though not thine
\nFine gold and silver ore;
\nMore worth to thee the gift of song,
\nAnd the clear insight more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cO Hafiz speak not of thy need;
\nAre not these verses thine?
\nThen all the poets are agreed,
\nNo man can less repine.\u201d<\/p>\n

He asserts his dignity as bard and inspired man of his people. To the Vizier returning from Mecca, he says, \u201cBoast not rashly, prince of pilgrims, of thy fortune. Thou hast indeed seen the temple; but I, the Lord of the temple. Nor has any man inhaled from the musk-bladder of the merchant, or from the musky morning-wind, that sweet air which I am permitted to breathe every hour of the day.\u201d And with still more vigour in the following lines:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cOft have I said, I say it once more,
\nI, a wanderer, do not stray from myself,
\nI am a kind of parrot; the mirror is holden to me;
\nWhat the Eternal says, I stammering say again.
\nGive me what you will; I eat thistles as roses,
\nAnd according to my food I grow and I give.
\nScorn me not, but know I have the pearl,
\nAnd am only seeking one to receive it.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Pg 121]<\/p>\n

And his claim has been admitted from the first. The muleteers and camel-drivers, on their way through the desert, sing snatches of his songs, not so much for the thought, as for their joyful temper and tone; and the cultivated Persians know his poems by heart. Yet Hafiz does not appear to have set any great value on his songs, since his scholars collected them for the first time after his death.<\/p>\n

In the following poem the soul is figured as the Ph\u0153nix alighting on Tuba, the Tree of Life:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cMy ph\u0153nix long ago secured
\nHis nest in the sky-vault\u2019s cope;
\nIn the body\u2019s cage immured,
\nHe was weary of life\u2019s hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cRound and round this heap of ashes
\nNow flies the bird amain,
\nBut in that odorous niche of heaven
\nNestles the bird again.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce, flies he upwards, he will perch
\nOn Tuba\u2019s golden bough;
\nHis home is on that fruited arch
\nWhich cools the blest below.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf over this world of ours
\nHis wings my ph\u0153nix spread,
\nHow gracious falls on land and sea
\nThe soul-refreshing shade!<\/p>\n

[Pg 122]<\/p>\n

\u201cEither world inhabits he,
\nSee oft below him planets roll;
\nHis body is all of air compact,
\nOf Allah\u2019s love his soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is an ode which is said to be a favourite with all educated Persians:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cCome!\u2014the palace of heaven rest on a\u00ebry pillars,\u2014
\nCome, and bring me wine; our days are wind.
\nI declare myself the slave of that masculine soul
\nWhich ties and alliance on earth once for ever renounces.
\nTold I thee yester-morn how the Iris of heaven
\nBrought to me in my cup a gospel of joy?
\nO high-flying falcon! the Tree of Life is thy perch;
\nThis nook of grief fits thee ill for a nest.
\nHearken! they call to thee down from the ramparts of heaven;
\nI cannot divine what holds thee here in a net.
\nI, too, have a counsel for thee; O mark it and keep it.
\nSince I received the same from the Master above:
\nSeek not for faith or for truth in a world of light-minded girls;
\nA thousand suitors reckons this dangerous bride.
\nCumber thee not for the world, and this my precept forget not,
\n\u2019Tis but a toy that a vagabond sweetheart has left us.
\nAccept whatever befalls; uncover thy brow from thy locks;
\n[Pg 123] Never to me nor to thee was option imparted;
\nNeither endurance nor truth belongs to the laugh of the rose.
\nThe loving nightingale mourns;\u2014cause enow for mourning;\u2014
\nWhy envies the bird the streaming verses of Hafiz?
\nKnow that a god bestowed on him eloquent speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cedar, the cypress, the palm, the olive, and fig-tree, the birds that inhabit them, and the garden flowers, are never wanting in these musky verses, and are always named with effect. \u201cThe willows,\u201d he says, \u201cbow themselves to every wind, out of shame for their unfruitfulness.\u201d We may open anywhere on a floral catalogue.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy breath of beds of roses drawn,
\nI found the grove in the morning pure,
\nIn the concert of the nightingales
\nMy drunken brain to cure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith unrelated glance
\nI looked the rose in the eye:
\nThe rose in the hour of gloaming
\nFlamed like a lamp hard-by.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was of her beauty proud.
\nAnd prouder of her youth,
\nThe while unto her flaming heart
\nThe bulbul gave his truth.<\/p>\n

[Pg 124]<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sweet narcissus closed
\nIts eye, with passion pressed;
\nThe tulips out of envy burned
\nMoles in their scarlet breast,<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lilies white prolonged
\nTheir sworded tongue to the smell;
\nThe clustering anemones
\nTheir pretty secrets tell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Presently we have,\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cAll day the rain
\nBathed the dark hyacinths in vain,
\nThe flood may pour from morn till night
\nNor wash the pretty Indians white.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so onward, through many a page.<\/p>\n

This picture of the first days of Spring, from Enweri, seems to belong to Hafiz:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cO\u2019er the garden water goes the wind alone
\nTo rasp and to polish the cheek of the wave;
\nThe fire is quenched on the dear hearthstone,
\nBut it burns again on the tulips brave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friendship is a favourite topic of the Eastern poets, and they have matched on this head the absoluteness of Montaigne.<\/p>\n

Hafiz says, \u201cThou learnest no secret until thou knoweth friendship; since to the unsound no heavenly knowledge enters.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Pg 125]<\/p>\n

Ibn Jemin writes thus:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhilst I disdain the populace,
\nI find no peer in higher place,
\nFriend is a word of royal tone,
\nFriend is a poem all alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWisdom is like the elephant,
\nLofty and rare inhabitant:
\nHe dwells in deserts or in courts;
\nWith hucksters he has no resorts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dschami says,\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cA friend is he, who, hunted as a foe,
\nSo much the kindlier shows him than before;
\nThrow stones at him, or ruder javelins throw,
\nHe builds with stone and steel a firmer floor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the amatory poetry of Hafiz we must be very sparing in our citations, though it forms the staple of the \u201cDivan.\u201d He has run through the whole gamut of passion,\u2014from the sacred to the borders, and over the borders, of the profane. The same confusion of high and low, the celerity of flight and allusion which our colder muses forbid, is habitual to him. From the plain text,\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cThe chemist of love
\nWill this perishing mould,
\nWere it made out of mire,
\nTransmute into gold.\u201d\u2014<\/p>\n

he proceeds to the celebration of his passion; and nothing in his religious or in his scientific traditions is too sacred or too remote to afford a token of his mistress. [Pg 126] The Moon thought she knew her own orbit well enough; but when she saw the curve on Zuleika\u2019s cheek, she was at a loss:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd since round lines are drawn
\nMy darling\u2019s lips about,
\nThe very Moon looks puzzled on,
\nAnd hesitates in doubt
\nIf the sweet curve that rounds thy mouth
\nBe not her true way to the South.\u201d<\/p>\n

His ingenuity never sleeps:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cAh could I hide me in my song,
\nTo kiss thy lips from which it flows!\u201d<\/p>\n

and plays in a thousand pretty courtesies:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cFair fall thy soft heart!
\nA good work wilt thou do?
\nO, pray for the dead
\nWhom thine eyelashes slew;\u201d<\/p>\n

And what a nest has he found for his bonny bird to take up her abode in!\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cThey strew in the paths of kings and czars
\nJewels and gems of price:
\nBut for thy head I will pluck down stars,
\nAnd pave thy way with eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have sought for thee a costlier dome
\nThan Mahmoud\u2019s palace high,
\nAnd thou, returning, find thy home
\nIn the apple of Love\u2019s eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Pg 127]<\/p>\n

Then we have all degrees of passionate abandonment:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cI know this perilous love-lane
\nNo whither the traveller leads,
\nYet my fancy the sweet scent of
\nThy tangled tresses feeds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the midnight of thy locks,
\nI renounce the day;
\nIn the ring of thy rose-lips,
\nMy heart forgets to pray.\u201d<\/p>\n

And sometimes his love rises to a religious sentiment:\u2014<\/p>\n

\u201cPlunge in your angry waves,
\nRenouncing doubt and care;
\nThe flowing of the seven broad seas
\nShall never wet thy hair.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs Allah\u2019s face on thee
\nBending with love benign,
\nAnd thou not less on Allah\u2019s eye,
\nO fairest turnest thine.\u201d<\/p>\n

We add to these fragments of Hafiz a few specimens from other poets.<\/p>\n

NISAMI.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile roses bloomed along the plain,
\nThe nightingale to the falcon said,
\n\u2018Why of all birds must thou be dumb?
\nWith closed mouth thou utterest,
\nThough dying, no last word to man.
\n[Pg 128] Yet sitt\u2019st thou on the hand of princes,
\nAnd feedest on the grouse\u2019s breast,
\nWhilst I, who hundred thousand jewels
\nSquander in a single tone,
\nLo! I feed myself with worms,
\nAnd my dwelling is the thorn.\u2019\u2014
\nThe falcon answered, \u2018Be all ear:
\nI, experienced in affairs,
\nSee fifty things, say never one;
\nBut thee the people prizes not
\nWho, doing nothing, say\u2019st a thousand.
\nTo me, appointed to the chase,
\nThe king\u2019s hand gives the grouse\u2019s breast;
\nWhilst a chatterer like thee
\nMust gnaw worms in the thorn. Farewell!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The following passages exhibit the strong tendency of the Persian poets to contemplative and religious poetry and to allegory.<\/p>\n

ENWERI.<\/p>\n

BODY AND SOUL.<\/p>\n

\u201cA painter in China once painted a hall;\u2014
\nSuch a web never hung on an emperor\u2019s wall;\u2014
\nOne half from his brush with rich colours did run,
\nThe other he touched with a beam of the sun;
\nSo that all which delighted the eye in one side,
\nThe same, point to point, in the other replied.<\/p>\n

[Pg 129]<\/p>\n

\u201cIn thee, friend, that Tyrian chamber is found;
\nThine the star-pointing roof, and the base on the ground:
\nIs one half depicted with colours less bright?
\nBeware that the counterpart blazes with light!\u201d<\/p>\n

IBN JEMIN.<\/p>\n

\u201cI read on the porch of a palace bold
\nIn a purple tablet letters cast,\u2014
\n\u2018A house though a million winters old,
\nA house of earth comes down at last;
\nThen quarry thy stones from the crystal All,
\nAnd build the dome that shall not fall.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat need,\u201d cries the mystic Feisi, \u201cof palaces and tapestry? What need even of a bed?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe eternal Watcher who doth wake
\nAll night in the body\u2019s earthen chest,
\nWill of thine arms a pillow make,
\nAnd a bolster of thy breast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ferideddin Attar wrote the \u201cBird Conversations,\u201d a mystical tale in which the birds coming together to choose their king, resolve on a pilgrimage to Mount Kaf, to pay their homage to the Simorg. From this poem, written five hundred years ago, we cite the following passage, as a proof of the identity of mysticism in all periods. The tone is quite modern. In the fable, the birds were soon weary of the length and difficulties of the way, and at last almost all gave out. [Pg 130] Three only persevered, and arrived before the throne of the Simorg.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bird-soul was ashamed;
\nTheir body was quite annihilated;
\nThey had cleaned themselves from the dust,
\nAnd were by the light ensouled.
\nWhat was, and was not,\u2014the Past,\u2014
\nWas wiped out from their breast.
\nThe sun from near-by beamed
\nClearest light into their soul;
\nThe resplendence of the Simorg beamed
\nAs one back from all three.
\nThey knew not, amazed, if they
\nWere either this or that.
\nThey saw themselves all as Simorg,
\nThemselves in the eternal Simorg.
\nWhen to the Simorg up they looked,
\nThey beheld him among themselves;
\nAnd when they looked on each other
\nThey saw themselves in the Simorg.
\nA single look grouped the two parties,
\nThe Simorg emerged, the Simorg vanished,
\nThis in that, and that in this,
\nAs the world has never heard.
\nSo remained they, sunk in wonder,
\nThoughtless in deepest thinking,
\nAnd quite unconscious of themselves.
\n[Pg 131] Speechless prayed they to the Highest
\nTo open this secret,
\nAnd to unlock Thou and We.
\nThere came an answer without tongue.\u2014
\n\u2018The Highest is a sun-mirror;
\nWho comes to Him sees himself therein,
\nSees body and soul, and soul and body;
\nWhen you came to the Simorg,
\nThree therein appeared to you,
\nAnd, had fifty of you come,
\nSo had you seen yourselves as many.
\nHim has none of us yet seen.
\nAnts see not the Pleiades.
\nCan the gnat grasp with his teeth
\nThe body of the elephant?
\nWhat you see is He not;
\nWhat you hear is He not.
\nThe valleys which you traverse,
\nThe actions which you perform,
\nThey lie under our treatment
\nAnd among our properties
\nYou as three birds are amazed,
\nImpatient, heartless, confused:
\nFar over you am I raised,
\nSince I am in act Simorg.
\nYe blot out my highest being,
\nThat ye may find yourselves on my throne;
\nFor ever ye blot out yourselves,
\nAs shadows in the sun. Farewell!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PERSIan POETRY BY\u00a0RALPH WALDO EMERSON AN POETRYTo Baron Von Hammer-Purgstall, who died in Vienna in 1856, we owe our best knowledge of the Persians. He has translated into German, besides … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}