HE is alone, beside HIM there is none;
No God there is but HE, and HE is One!

From Thee, O Friend, I cannot break my chain,
Though limb from limb they hew my trunk amain.
In truth, from us a hundred lives were meet;
Half a sweet smile from Thee will ease our pain!
O father, cease to caution me of Love!
This headstrong son will never prudence gain.
Rather 'twere meet they should admonish those
Who 'gainst Thy love admonish me in vain.
Well do I know the way to Safety's street,
But what can I, who long in bonds have lain?

HE is alone, beside HIM there is none;
No God there is but HE, and HE is one!”

This poem comprises six strophes, separated by the above refrain, and contains in all (including the refrain-verse, five times repeated) about 148 verses, viz., 23 + 1 in the first strophe, 13 + 1 in the second, 17 + 1 in the third, 15 + 1 in the fourth, 18 + 1 in the fifth, and 57 in the sixth. If at the end of the second strophe, instead of having the same verse repeated we had a different verse in a different rhyme, the two half-verses of which rhymed together, the result would be a tarkíb-band. * It will be observed that each strophe begins like a qaṣída or ghazal, with a maṭla', or initial verse, of which the two halves rhyme together.

The musammaṭ, according to Rückert (p. 85 of Pertsch's edition), is a general term including all the varieties of The Musammaṭ. multiple-poem, while the definition given by Rashídu'd-Dín Waṭwáṭ identifies it with what the Moorish poets called muwashshaḥ, where the miṣrá' has an internal rhyme, as in the following verses con­tained in my rendering of a poem ascribed to the Bábí heroine, Qurratu'l-'Ayn:—

“The musk of Cathay might perfume gain from the scent those fragrant tresses rain,

While those eyes demolish a faith in vain attacked by the pagans of Tartary.

With you who despise both Love and wine for the hermit's cell and the zealot's shrine,

What can I do? For our faith divine ye hold as a thing of infamy!”

Of all the early poets Minúchihrí appears to have been fondest of the musammaṭ, which has been revived in quite modern times by Mírzá Dáwarí of Shíráz. Two strophes from an unpublished musammaṭ of the latter will suffice to illustrate the usual form of this variety of poem:—

“O Arab boy, God give you happy morn!
The morning wine-cup give, for here's the dawn!
Give to the Pole one draught, and I'll be sworn
'Twill cast you down the crown of Capricorn:
You Ursa makes its ransom, tender fawn,
When sphere-like round the wine-jar you rotate.
Hast thou no wine? Clasp close the wine-skin old,
Then Arab-wise o'er head thy mantle hold,
And, like the Arabs, skirt in girdle fold;
Mantle and wine-skin clasp in hand-grip bold,
By wine-stained robe be wine-skin's bounty told;
And from thy lodging seek the Tavern's gate.”

The rhyme of this kind of musammaṭ, which is by far the commonest, may therefore be represented by the formula: a,a,a,a,a,x; b,b,b,b,b,x; c,c,c,c,c,x, &c. Another form used by Minúchihrí consists of a series of strophes each containing six rhyming miṣra's, according to the formula: a,a,a,a,a,a; b,b,b,b,b,b, &c. It will thus be seen that the musammaṭ of the former and most usual type is essentially a mukhammas, or “fivesome,” save that generally in the true mukhammas the five lines, or half-verses, composing the opening stanza all rhyme together, after which the rhyme changes, save in the tenth, fifteenth, and twentieth lines or half-verses, which maintain the rhyme of the first stanza. Very often the basis of a multiple-poem is a ghazal of some other poet, to each bayt of which two more half-verses or miṣrá's are added to make a murabba' (“foursome”), three to make a mukhammas (“fivesome”), and so on. We can most easily illustrate these forms by taking the opening lines of the translation given at p. 31 supra of Minúchihrí's qaṣída, as follows:—

The shades of evening mark the close of day;
The sunset fades, the world grows cold and grey;
“O tentsman, haste, and strike the tents, I pray!
The caravan's already under way.”

In haste the travellers together come;
Their voices rise like swarming bee-hive's hum;
“The drummer sounds already the first drum;
Their loads the drivers on the camels lay.”

The shades of evening mark the close of day;
The sunset fades, the world grows cold and grey;
Across the plain the length'ning shadows play;
“O tentsman, haste, and strike the tents, I pray!
The caravan's already under way.”

In haste the travellers together come;
Some all unready, long expectant some;
Their voices rise like swarming bee-hive's hum;
“The drummer sounds already the first drum;
Their loads the drivers on the camels lay.”

The structure of the musaddas (“sixsome”), musabba' (“sevensome”), and the remaining multiple-poems is precisely similar to these, and need not be further illustrated.

The mustazád, or “increment-poem,” is an ordinary quatrain, ode, or the like, whereof each half-verse is followed by a short The Mustazád. metrical line, not required to complete the sense or metre of the poem to which it is appended; these “increment-verses” rhyming and making sense to­gether like a separate poem. We may illustrate this verse-form by means of the poem used to illustrate the murabba' and the mukhammas.

“O tentsman, haste, and strike the tents, I pray;”

“The caravan's already under way;”

“The drummer sounds already the first drum;”

“Their loads the drivers on the camels lay.”

“The evening-prayer is near, and lo! to­night ”

“The sun and moon opposed do stand at bay,”

The day grows late; They will not wait.

The mule-bells call;

Mate cries to mate.

The sky is clear;

Beyond the gate—

and so on. It will be observed that the sense and rhyme of the poem is complete without the increment, and vice versâ. It is not, however, necessary that the multiple-poem or the incre­ment-poem should be based upon an earlier poem by some other author, for a poem may be composed originally in one of these forms.*

Besides the above classification by form, there is another classification (referring especially to the qaṣída, whereof the Classification by subject. scope is much wider and more varied than that of any other verse-form, except, perhaps, the qiṭ'a and the mathnawí) according to topic or subject. Thus a qaṣída may be a panegyric (madíḥa), or a satire (hajw), or a death-elegy (marthiya), or philosophical (ḥikamiyya), or it may contain a description of spring (rabí'iyya), or winter (shitá'iyya), or autumn (khizániyya), or it may consist of a discussion between two personified opposites (e.g., night and day, summer and winter, lance and bow, heaven and earth, Persian and Arab, Muslim and Zoroastrian, heat and cold, or the like), when it is called a munádhara, “joust,” or “strife-poem,” * or it may be in the form of a dialogue (su'ál u jawáb, “question and answer”), and so on. The “dialogue” also occurs in ghazals, of which also sundry other forms exist, such as the mulamma', or “patch-work” poem, where alternate lines or verses are in two (occasionally three) different languages, e.g., Arabic and Persian, or both of these and one of the dialects of Persian; or we may have poems entirely in dialect, the so-called Fahlawiyyát, or “Pahlawí” ballads, which were common down to the thirteenth century of our era, and not rare in later times. In addition to these, there is the muwash- shaḥ or acrostic, * the mu'ammá or riddle, the lughz or enigma, the nadhíra (which may be merely a “parallel,” or imitation, or an actual parody), and the taḍmín, or quotation (literally, “insertion”), where a poem by another author is taken as the basis, and added to, often in the spirit of parody. The only example of this last I can recollect in English is by Lewis Carroll, and occurs in his Phantasmagoria, afterwards re­published under the title of Rhyme? and Reason? This is a genuine taḍmín of the well-known poem beginning, “I never loved * a dear gazelle,” and the first verse runs, so far as I can recollect (for I have not the book at hand):—