THE DESIRING BY JOSEPH OF THE OFFICE OF A SHEPHERD FOR THE REASON THAT THERE HAD BEEN NO PROPHET WHO HAD NOT PERFORMED A SHEPHERD'S OFFICE.

Happy the hopeless one allowed by Fate
On his belovèd, wandering round, to wait!
To his own wish he is no longer thrall,
But to her wishes he surrenders all.
'Tis on his lip if she his life desire;
Her dust he'll kiss and will himself expire.
Should she desire his heart, by grief oppressed
He through his eyes pours out blood from his breast,
And in her service honoured to be led,
When she says “Rise,” he makes her foot his head.
Driven, like pen, he will not turn his look,
And called he twists his face not like a book.
Of all enlightened people in the view
Sheepfolding is to prophet suited, too.
Joseph, as many rulers of his kind,
To fill a shepherd's office had a mind;
And when Zuleikha heard of Joseph's will,
She turned her reins that longing to fulfil.
First from art-masters did she this demand,
That they should make a sling for Joseph's hand.
Like sun with gold adorned its rope they rove,
And like to amber-scented ringlets wove.
Rose in Zuleikha's mind the wish again,
To be as hair entangled in the strain.
“To him without some cause myself I cannot bind:
“And thus to kiss his hand occasion I may find.”
“Oh! how would I desire,” again she said,
“To bind him by one hair from off my head!”
Jewels upon it then she fastened round,
Like the pearls and gems on her eyelash found:
A ruby if she found of beauteous hue,
This like a worthless stone on it she threw.
Then did she give the shepherds her command,
In hills and deserts grazing flocks at hand,
That they should from those flocks some lambs provide,
And those without an equal set aside,
Like Tartar deer on hyacinths that grazed,
In whom alarm a wolf had never raised.
In armour clad of wool like black men's hair,
In colour than fine silk more fresh and fair.
In fatness were their tails of equal weight,
The lambs through weightiness of graceful gait,
In every valley where they grazing stood,
It was as waves of butter in a flood.
The wind upon the waves' face* in its pride
To making watery chains itself applied.
Among these flocks did Joseph hastening go,
In Aries' sign as is the sun aglow.
Like the musk antelopes that lonely stray,
He to those flocks of sheep went on his way.
Zuleikha all her sense and heart and care
Sent, like a tailed dog, with the shepherd there.
And other guardians, too, did she provide
To watch lest him some evil should betide.
Thus as it pleased him he proceeded still,
And uncontrolled by any other's will.
At will a shepherd in the desert he,
Or of her soul's realm might the monarch be.
That fairy-born one in his purity
From kingship both and shepherdhood was free.