“Waft, gentle gale, oh waft to Samarcand,
When next thou visitest that blissful land,
The plaint of Khorassania plunged in woe:
Bear to Turania's King our piteous scroll,
Whose opening breathes forth all the anguished soul,
And close denotes what all the tortur'd know.
“Whose red-tinged folds rich patriot blood enclose,
The mortal fine impos'd by ruthless foes,
And misshap'd letters prove our trembling fears:
Whose every word reveals a pungent grief,
Whose every line implores a prompt relief,
While every page is moistened with our tears.
“Soon as loud Fame our wretched fate shall sound,
The ear of Pity shall receive a wound,
And feel th'extreme of intellectual pain:
Soon as our dismal tale shall meet the view,
The melting orbs shall catch a purple hue,
And sanguine drops the mournful verse distain.”
Here, for comparison, is the corresponding portion of Palmer's rendering:—
“O gentle Zephyr! if o'er Samarcand
Some dewy morning thou shouldst chance to blow,
Then waft this letter to our monarch's hand,
Wherein Khorassan tells her tale of woe;
Wherein the words that for the heading stand
Are present danger and destruction nigh;
Wherein the words that are inscribed below
Are grief, and wretchedness, and misery;
On every fold a martyr's blood appears,
From every letter breathes a mourner's sigh;
Its lines are blotted with the orphan's tears,
Its ink the widow's burning anguish dries!
Its bare recital wounds the listener's ears,
Its bare perusal scathes the reader's eyes.”
Here, lastly, is the literal rendering of the original:—
“O morning breeze, if thou passest by Samarqand,
Bear to the Prince (Kháqán) the letter of the people of Khur-
ásán;
A letter whose opening is grief of body and affliction of soul,
A letter whose close is sorrow of spirit and burning of heart,
A letter in whose lines the sighs of the miserable are manifest,
A letter in whose folds the blood of the martyrs is concealed,
The characters of its script dry as the bosoms of the oppressed,
The lines of its address moist from the eyes of the sorrowful;
Whereby the auditory channel is wounded at the time of
hearing,
Whereby the pupil of the eye is turned to blood at the time
of looking!”
One more series of parallel passages, arranged in the same order, may be taken before we bid farewell to this remarkable poem:—
“Here upstart slaves, to fame and worth unknown,
Rear their proud crests, and in imperious tone,
Command, whom distant nations still revere:
Here Avarice scoffs at virtue in distress,
And spurns whose bounty grateful thousands bless—
Oh hard reverse! and fate too, too severe!
“View where sage elders, prostrate at the door
Of some low wretch, in vain relief implore;
In vain their anguish and their wrongs disclose:
Behold the sons of rank debauchery bind
Yon holy anchorite, by Heav'n resigned,
A prey to dungeons and to sharpest woes!
“Is there, where Ruin reigns in dreadful state,
Whom Fortune smiles on, or whom joys await?—
'Tis yonder corpse descending to the tomb:
Is there a spotless female to be found,
Where deeds of diabolic lust abound?—
'Tis yonder infant issuing from the womb!
“The mosque no more admits the pious race;
Constrain'd, they yield to beasts the holy place,
A stable now, where dome nor porch is found:
Nor can the savage foe proclaim his reign,
For Khorassania's criers all are slain,
And all her pulpits levelled with the ground!
Palmer's translation of this passage runs as follows:—
“Good men to bad men are compelled to stoop
The noble are subjected to the vile,
The priest is pressed to fill the drunkard's stoup.
No man therein is ever seen to smile,Save at the blow that brings release—and doom
No maiden lives whom they do not defile,
Except the maid within her mother's womb!
In every town the mosque and house of prayer—
To give their horses and their cattle room—
Is left all roofless, desolate, and bare.
‘Prayer for our Tartar rulers’ there is none
In all Khorassan, it is true—for where,
Where are the preachers and the pulpits gone?”
Here, lastly, is the literal translation:—
“O'er the great ones of the age the small are lords,
O'er the nobles of the world the mean are chiefs;
At the doors of the ignoble the well-born stand sad and be-
wildered,
In the hands of libertines the virtuous are captive and con-
strained.
Thou seest no man glad save at the door of Death,
Thou seest no girl a maiden save in her mother's womb.
The chief mosque of each city for their beasts
Is a resting-place, whereof neither roof nor door is visible.
Nowhere [it is true] do they read the khuṭba in the name of
the Ghuzz,
For in all Khurásán there is neither preacher nor pulpit.”
We now pass to the second chapter of Zhukovski's book, in
which he treats of the literary activity and characteristics of
Anwarí. As regards the models whom he imitated, the
following Arabic and Persian poets and men of letters are
mentioned in different passages of his poems: al-Akhṭal,
Jarír, A'shá, Ḥassán [b. Thábit], al-Buḥturí, Abu'l-Firás,
Badí'u'z-Zamán al-Hamadhání, al-Ḥarírí, 'Unṣurí, Firdawsí,
Farrukhí, Abu'l-Faraj, Amír Mu'izzí, Saná'í, Adíb Ṣábir,
Rashídí, Ḥamídu'd-Dín, Rashídu'd-Dín Waṭwáṭ, Shujá'í and
Kamálu'd-Dín Isma'íl; a list which, as Zhukovski observes,
shows that he was equally familiar with the old classical poets
and with his contemporaries. Amongst the latter he was, as
we have already seen, on very friendly terms with Ḥamídu'd-
“This grasshopper's foot to the Court of Sulaymán
It shames me to send, and I ask for his pardon;
I fear to imagine the scorn of the basils
For this thorn of acanthus I send to their garden.”
Amongst the poets he seems, according to the Ta'ríkh-i-
The third chapter of Zhukovski's book discusses the difficulty of Anwarí's verse and the aids for its comprehension, especially two commentaries thereon by Muḥammad b. Dá'údi-'Alawí of Shádábád (who also commentated Kháqání's poems), and Abu'l-Ḥasan Faráhání, who flourished in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Of the latter, who used oral as well as written sources (whereof sixty-eight different works are enumerated), Zhukovski expresses a very high opinion.