I have now come to this distinguished class of men and think it right to say a few words about them. Poets strike out a road to the inaccessible realm of thought, and divine grace beams forth in their genius. But many of them do not recognize the high value of their talent, and barter it away from a wish to possess inferior store: they pass their time in praising the mean-minded, or soil their language with invectives against the wise. If it were not so, the joining of words were wonderful indeed; for by this means lofty ideas are understood.
He who joins words to words, gives away a drop from the blood of his heart.*
Every one who strings words to words, performs, if no miracle, yet a wonderful action.*
I do not mean a mere external union. Truth and falsehood, wisdom and foolishness, pearls and common shells, though far distant from each other, have a superficial similarity. I mean a spiritual union; and this is only possible in the harmonious, and to recognize it is difficult, and to weigh it still more so.
For this reason his Majesty does not care for poets; he attaches no weight to a handful of imagination. Fools think that he does not care for poetry, and that for this reason he turns his heart from the poets. Notwithstanding this circumstance, thousands of poets are continually at court, and many among them have completed a díwán, or have written a masnawí. I shall now enumerate the best among them.
He was a man of cheerful disposition, liberal, active, an early riser. He was a disciple of the emperor, and was thus at peace with the whole world. His Majesty understood the value of his genius and conferred upon him the title of Malikush-shu'ará, or king of the poets.* He wrote for nearly forty years under the name of Faizí, which he afterwards, under divine inspiration, changed to Fayyází, as he himself says in his ‘Nal Daman’—
Before this, whenever I issued anything,
The writing on my signet was ‘Faizí.’
But as I am now chastened by spiritual love,
I am the ‘Fayyází’ of the Ocean of Superabundance (God's love).*
His excellent manners and habits cast a lustre on his genius. He was eminently distinguished in several branches. He composed many works in Persian and Arabic. Among others he wrote the Sawáṭi' ul-ilhám* (‘rays of inspiration’), which is a commentary to the Qorán in Arabic, in which he only employed such letters as have no dots. The words of the Çúrat ul Ikhláç* contain the date of its completion.
He looked upon wealth as the means of engendering poverty,* and adversity of fortune was in his eyes an ornament to cheerfulness. The door of his house was open to relations and strangers, friends and foes; and the poor were comforted in his dwelling. As he was difficult to please, he gave no publicity to his works, and never put the hand of request to the forehead* of loftiness. He cast no admiring glance on himself. Genius as he was, he did not care much for poetry, and did not frequent the society of wits. He was profound in philosophy; what he had read with his eyes was nourishment for the heart. He deeply studied medicine, and gave poor people advice gratis.
The gems of thought in his poems will never be forgotten. Should leisure permit, and my heart turn to worldly occupations, I would collect some of the excellent writings of this unrivalled author of the age, and gather, with the eye of a jealous critic, yet with the hand of a friend, some of his verses.* But now it is brotherly love—a love which does not travel along the road of critical nicety—, that commands me to write down some of his verses.
1. O Thou who existest from eternity and abidest for ever, sight cannot bear Thy light, praise cannot express Thy perfection.
2. Thy light melts the understanding, and Thy glory baffles wisdom; to think of Thee destroys reason, Thy essence confounds thought.
3. Thy holiness pronounces that the blood drops of human meditation are shed in vain in search of Thy knowledge: human understanding is but an atom of dust.
4. Thy jealousy, the guard of Thy door, stuns human thought by a blow in the face, and gives human ignorance a slap on the nape of the neck.
5. Science is like blinding desert sand on the road to Thy perfection; the town of literature is a mere hamlet compared with the world of Thy knowledge.
6. My foot has no power to travel on this path which misleads sages; I have no power to bear the odour of this wine, it confounds my knowledge.
7. The tablet of Thy holiness is too pure for the (black) tricklings of the human pen; the dross of human understanding is unfit to be used as the philosopher's stone.
8. Man's so called foresight and guiding reason wander about bewildered in the streets of the city of Thy glory.
9. Human knowledge and thought combined can only spell the first letter of the alphabet of Thy love.
10. Whatever our tongue can say, and our pen can write, of Thy Being, is all empty sound and deceiving scribble.*
11. Mere beginners and such as are far advanced in knowledge are both eager for union with Thee; but the beginners are tattlers, and those that are advanced are triflers.
12. Each brain is full of the thought of grasping Thee; the brow of Plato even burned with the fever heat of this hopeless thought.
13. How shall a thoughtless man like me succeed when Thy jealousy strikes down with a fatal blow the thoughts* of saints?
14. O that Thy grace would cleanse my brain; for if not, my restlessness (quṭrub)* will end in madness.
15. For him who travels barefooted on the path towards Thy glory, even the mouths of dragons would be as it were a protection for his feet (lit. greaves).*
16. Compared with Thy favour, the nine metals of earth are but as half a handful of dust; compared with the table of Thy mercies, the seven oceans are a bowl of broth.
17. To bow down the head upon the dust of Thy threshold and then to look up, is neither correct in faith, nor permitted by truth.
18. Alas, the stomach of my worldliness takes in impure food like a hungry dog, although Love, the doctor,* bade me abstain from it.
1. O man, thou coin bearing the double stamp of body and spirit, I do not know what thy nature is; for thou art higher than heaven and lower than earth.
2. Do not be cast down, because thou art a mixture of the four elements; do not be self-complacent, because thou art the mirror of the seven realms (the earth).
3. Thy frame contains the image of the heavenly and the lower regions, be either heavenly or earthly, thou art at liberty to choose.
4. Those that veil their faces in Heaven [the angels] love thee; thou, misguiding the wise, art the fondly petted one of the solar system (lit. the seven planets).
5. Be attentive, weigh thy coin, for thou art a correct balance [i. e., thou hast the power of correctly knowing thyself], sift thy atoms well; for thou art the philosopher's stone (<Arabic>).
6. Learn to understand thy value; for the heaven buys (mushtarí*) thy light, in order to bestow it upon the planets.
7. Do not act against thy reason, for it is a trustworthy counsellor; put not thy heart on illusions, for it (the heart) is a lying fool.
8. Why art thou an enemy to thyself, that from want of perfection thou shouldst weary thy better nature and cherish thy senses (or tongue)?
9. The heart of time sheds its blood on thy account [i. e., the world is dissatisfied with thee]; for in thy hyprocrisy thou art in speech like balm, but in deeds like a lancet.
10. Be ashamed of thy appearance; for thou pridest thyself on the title of ‘sum total,’ and art yet but a marginal note.
11. If such be the charm of thy being, thou hadst better die; for the eye of the world regards thee as an optical illusion (mukarrar).
12. O careless man, why art thou so inattentive to thy loss and thy gain; thou sellest thy good luck and bargainest for misfortunes.
13. If on this hunting-ground thou wouldst but unfold the wing of resolution, thou wouldst be able to catch even the phœnix with sparrow feathers.*
14. Do not be proud (farbih) because thou art the centre of the body of the world. Dost thou not know that people praise a waist (miyán) when it is thin?*