Salāmān va Absāl - Salāmān and Absāl; Bird Parliament

EDWARD FitzGerald is supposed to have taken up the study of Persian in 1853, under the direction of his friend, Professor E. B. Cowell. He says in a letter to Frederick Tennyson: “I also amuse myself with poking out some Persian which E. Cowell would inaugurate me with: I go on with it because it is a point in common with him and enables us to study together.” Two years later he is encouraging Professor Cowell to translate Hafiz “into pure, sweet, and partially measured prose,” which he says “must be better than what I am doing for Jámí, whose ingenious prattle I am stilting into too Miltonic verse.”

Again in 1857, in March, he says: “Only to-day I have been opening dear old Salámán: the original copy we bought and began this time three years ago at Oxford; with all my scratches of Query and Explanation in it, and the Notes from you among the Leaves.”

Even after he had got much interested in Omar and had translated some of his Quatrains both into English and into Latin, he was inclined to think Salámán was superior to anything he had read in Persian. He was still at work at it in September, 1858: “I believe I will do a little a day so as not to lose what little knowledge I had.”

In his correspondence very little is said of his Persian studies, but in May, 1879, in a letter to Professor Charles Eliot Norton he says, speaking of Professor Cowell: “This reminds me of all the pains he bestowed on me five and twenty years ago; of which the result is one final Edition of Omar and Jámí. … Omar remains as he was; Jámí (Salámán) is cut down to two-thirds of his former proportion, and very much improved, I think. It is still in a wrong key: Verse of Miltonic strain, unlike the simple Eastern; I remember trying that at first, but could not succeed. So there is little but the Allegory itself (not a bad one), and now condensed into a very fair Bird's Eye view; quite enough for any Allegory, I think.” He mentions it for the last time in a letter to H. Schütz Wilson in these terms: “I must thank you sincerely for your thoughts about Salámán, in which I recognize a good will toward the Translator, as well as liking for his work. Of course your praise could not but help that on: but I scarce think that it is of a kind to profit so far by any review as to make it worth the expense of Time and Talent you might bestow upon it. In Omar's case it was different: he sang, in an acceptable way it seems, of what all men feel in their hearts, but had not had exprest in verse before: Jámí tells of what everybody knows, under cover of a not very skilful Allegory. I have undoubtedly improved the whole ??y boiling it down to about a Quarter of its original size; and there are many pretty things in it, though the blank Verse is too Miltonic for Oriental style.

“All this considered, why did I ever meddle with it? Why, it was the first Persian Poem I read, with my friend Edward Cowell, near on forty years ago: and I was so well pleased with it then (and now think it almost the best of the Persian Poems I have read or heard about), that I published my Version of it in 1856 (I think) with Parker of the Strand. When Parker disappeared, my unsold Copies, many more than of the sold, were returned to me; some of which, if not all, I gave to little Quaritch, who, I believe, trumpeted them off to some little profit: and I thought no more of them. But some six or seven years ago that Sheikh of mine, Edward Cowell, who liked the Version better than any one else, wished it to be reprinted. So I took it in hand, boiled it down to three-fourths of what it originally was, and (as you see) clapt it on the back of Omar, where I still believed it would hang somewhat of a dead weight; but that was Quar-itch's look-out, not mine. I have never heard of any notice taken of it, but just now from you: and I beli??e that, say what you would, people would rather have the old Sinner alone.”

The Allegory with lyrical interludes occupies from page 37 to page 117 in the fourth or 1879 edition of the Rubáïyát of Omar Khayyám. It was never reprinted in its first form and though it appears in the three-volume edition as well as in the two-volume (memorial) edition of FitzGerald's works and in one American reprint, it has never before the present time been presented by itself.

Yet it deserves it. The Allegory is like the best of works of that sort—interesting in itself as well as for the moral it conveys; and the graceful interludes, throwing a side-light on the story are varied, original, and unique. There would seem to be no reason why “Salámán and Absál” should not have a wide popularity on its own merits.

In the present edition the text printed in the third volume of the “Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald” has been used. It varies from that of the 1879 edition only in the spelling of one or two words. It seemed hardly worth while to call attention to the fact that there is a slight discrepancy in the employment of accents. An acute accent, as used by FitzGerald, merely indicates that a vowel is long and it is of so little importance whether Káshgari has one or none, or whether Maukáná and Loristání have one or two that no attempt is made to note these variants. The letter to Professor Cowell appears to have been written as a sort of preface to it, but was not prefixed to the edition of 1879 or to that of 1887.

Professor Cowell in a note prefixed to the “Bird Parliament” in the three-volume edition of Fitz- Gerald's works says: “FitzGerald was first interested in ‘Aṭṭar's Manṭiḳ-uṭ-ṭair’ by the extracts given in De Sacy's notes to his edition of that poet's Pandnâmah, and in 1856 he began to read the original in a MS. lent to him by Mr. Newton of Hertford. In 1857 Garcin de Tassy published his edition of the Persian text, of which he had previously given an analysis in his “La poèsie phi-losophique et religieuse chez les Persans”; and Fitz-Gerald at once threw himself into the study of it with all his characteristic enthusiasm. De Tassy subsequently published in 1863 a French prose translation of the poem; but the previous analysis was, I believe, FitzGerald's only help in mastering the difficulties of the original. He often wrote to me in India, describing the pleasure he found in his new discovery, and he used to mention how the more striking apologues were gradually shaping themselves into verse, as he thought them over in his lonely walks. At last, in 1862, he sent me the following translation, intending at first to offer it for publication in the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society; but he soon felt that it was too free a ver- sion for the pages of a scientific journal. He then talked of publishing it by itself, but the project never assumed a definite shape, though I often urged him to print the ‘Bird-Parliament’ as a sequel to the ‘Salâmân.’”

The paraphrase, which is so entirely in line with the spirit and style of the “Salâmân and Absâl” is in itself worthy of being better known than it is, and it seems remarkable that the great and ever-growing popularity of the “Rubáiyát” should not have reflected light on the two Persian poems here for the first time associated as Professor Cowell suggested. The story of the translation is scattered through FitzGerald's letters in brief, unobtrusive references which are here collected.

In a letter to Professor Cowell, written from London and dated January 22, 1857, he says: “My great Performance all lies in the last five weeks since I have been alone here; when I wrote to Napoleon Newton to ask him to lend me his MS. of Attár's Mantic uttair; and, with the help of Gar-cin de Tassy have nearly made out about two-thirds of it. For it has greatly interested me, though I con- fess it is always an old Story. The Germans make a Fuss about the Súfi Doctrine; but, as far as I understand, it is not very abstruse Pantheism, and always the same. One becomes as wearied of the man-i and du-i in their Philosophy as of the bulbul, &c., in their Songs. Attár's Doctrine seems to me only Jámí and Jeláleddín (of whom I have poked out a little from the MS. you bought for me), but his Mantic has, like Salámán, the advantage of having a Story to hang all upon; and some of his illustrative Stories are very agreeable: better than any of the others I have seen. He has not so much Fancy or Imagination as Jámí, nor I dare say, so much depth as Jeláleddín; but his touch is lighter. I mean to make a Poetic Abstract of the Mantic, I think.” The next day having received a letter from Professor Cowell, he wrote again—a sort of postscript which is illustrative.

“This morning,” he says, “I have been taking the Physiognomy of the 19th Birds. … There are, as I wrote you, very pleasant stories. One, of a Shah returning to his Capital, and his People dressing out a Welcome for him, and bringing out Presents of Gold, Jewels, &c. all which he rides past without any Notice, till, coming to the Prison, the Prisoners, by way of their Welcome, toss before him the Bloody Heads and Limbs of old and recent Execution. At which the Shah for the first time stops his Horse—smiles—casts Largess among the Prisoners &c. And when asked why he neglected all the Jewels &c. and stopped with satisfaction at such a grim welcome as the Prisoners threw him, he says, ‘The Jewels &c. were but empty Ostentation—but those bloody Limbs prove that my Law has been executed, without which none of those Heads and Carcasses would have parted Company &c.’ De Tassy notices a very agreeable Story of Mahmúd and the Lad fishing: and I find another as pleasant about Mahmúd consorting ‘incog:’ with a Bath-Stove-Keeper, who is so good a Fellow that, at last, Mahmúd, making himself known, tells the Poor Man to ask what he will—a Crown, if he likes. But the poor Fellow says, ‘All I ask is that the Shah will come now and then to me as I am, and here where I am; here, in this poor Place, which he has made illustrious with his Presence, and a better Throne to me with Him, than the Throne of Both Worlds without Him &c.’ You observed perhaps in De Tassy's Summary that he notices an Eastern Form of William Tell's Apple? A Sultan doats on a beautiful Slave, who yet is seen daily to pine away under all the Shah's Favour, and being askt why, replies, ‘Because every day the Shah, who is a famous Marksman with the Bow, shoots at an Apple laid on my Head, and always hits it; and when all the Court cries “Lo! the Fortune of the King!” He also asks me why I turn pale under the Trial, he being such a Marksman, and his Mark an Apple set on the Head he most doats upon?’ I am going to transcribe on the next Page a rough Draft of a Version of another Story, because all this will amuse you, I think. I couldn't help running some of these Apologues into Verse as I read them: but they are in a very rough state as yet, and so perhaps may continue, for to correct is the Bore.

When Yúsúf from his Father's House was torn,
His Father's Heart was utterly forlorn;
And, like a Pipe with but one note, his Tongue
Still nothing but the name of Yúsúf rung.
Then down from Heaven's Branches came the Bird
Of Heaven, and said “God wearies of that Word.
Hast thou not else to do, and else to say?”
So Yacúb's lips were sealèd from that Day.
But one Night in a Vision, far away
His Darling in some alien Home he saw,
And stretch'd his Arms forth; and between the Awe
Of God's Displeasure, and the bitter Pass
Of Love and Anguish, sigh'd forth an Alas!
And stopp'd—But when he woke The Angel came,
And said, ‘Oh, faint of purpose! Though the Name
Of that Belovèd were not utter'd by
Thy Lips, it hung sequester'd in that Sigh.’

You see this is very imperfect, and I am not always quite certain of always getting the right Sow by the Ear; but it is pretty anyhow. In this, as in several other Stories, one sees the fierce vindictive Character of the Eastern Divinity and Religion: a ‘jealous God’ indeed! So there is another Story of a poor Hermit, who retires into the Wilderness to be alone with God, and lives in a Tree, and there in the Branches a little Bird has a Nest, and sings so sweetly that the poor old Man's Heart is drawn to it in spite of Himself; till a Voice from Heaven calls to Him—‘What are you about? You have bought Me with your Prayers &c. and I You by some Largess of Grace: and is this Bargain to be cancelled by the Piping of a little Bird?”

The Apologue here described FitzGerald afterwards began to turn into verse, but it remained a fragment and is printed with the gaps filled by Professor Cowell as a foot-note to the letter quoted.

A Saint there was who threescore Years and ten
In holy Meditation among Men
Had spent, but, wishing, ere he came to close
With God, to meet him in complete Repose,
Withdrew into the Wilderness, where he
Set up his Dwelling in an agèd Tree
Whose hollow Trunk his Winter Shelter made,
And whose green branching Arms his Summer Shade.
And like himself a Nightingale one Spring
Making her Nest above his Head would sing
So sweetly that her pleasant Music stole
Between the Saint and his severer Soul,
And made him sometimes [heedless of his] Vows
Listening his little Neighbour in the Boughs.
Until one Day a sterner Music woke
The sleeping Leaves, and through the Branches spoke—
“What! is the Love between us two begun
And waxing till we Two were nearly One,
For three score Years of Intercourse unstirr'd
Of Men, now shaken by a little Bird;
And such a precious Bargain, and so long
A making, [put in peril] for a Song?”

In March of the same year he says:

“I keep putting into shape some of that Mantic which however would never do to publish. For this reason: that anything like a literal Translation would be, I think, unreadable; and what I have done for amusement is not only so unliteral, but I doubt unoriental, in its form and Expression, as would destroy the value of the Original without replacing it with anything worth reading of my own. It has amused me however to reduce the Mass into something of an Artistic Shape.” And a week later, having left the letter unfinished, he says:

“To-day I have been writing twenty pages of a metrical Sketch of the Mantic, for such uses as I told you of. It is an amusement to me to take what Liberties I like with these Persians, who (as I think) are not Poets enough to frighten one from such excursions, and who really do want a little Art to shape them.”

In September, 1858, he just mentions his “amusement” with the Bird Parliament: “Nor have I meddled with the Mantic lately: nor does what you say encourage me to do so. For what I had sketched out was very paraphrase indeed. I do not indeed believe that any readable Account (unless a prose Analysis for the History and Curiosity of the Thing) will be possible, for me to do, at least. But I took no great pleasure in what I had done: and every day got more and more a sort of Terror at reopening any such MS. My ‘Go’ (such as it was) is gone and it becomes Work: and the Upshot is not worth working for.”

In November of that same year he writes that he has nearly “finisht a metrical Paraphrase and Epitome of the Mantic,” but he adds: “you would scarce like it, and who else would?”

Nevertheless he worked out a “‘Bird's Eye’ View of the Bird Poem in some sixteen hundred lines” and left it untouched for nearly ten years. But in December, 1867, the French Orientalist Garcin de Tassy, at whom FitzGerald is always poking a little fun, sent him a copy of Attar's Birds in a literal prose translation.

He wrote Professor Cowell from Lowestoft: “Here, at Lowestoft, in this same row of houses, two doors off, I was writing out the Translation I made in the Winter of 1859. I have scarce looked at Original or Translation since. But I was struck by this; that eight years had made little or no alteration in my idea of the matter: it seemed to me that I really had brought in nearly all worth remembering, and had really condensed the whole into a much compacter Image than the original. This is what I think I can do, with such discursive things: such as all the Oriental things I have seen are. I remember you thought that I had lost the Apologues toward the close; but I believe I was right in excluding them, as the narrative grew dramatic and neared the Catastrophe. Also, it is much better to glance at the dangers of the Valley when the Birds are in it, than to let the Leader recount them before: which is not good policy, morally or dramatically. When I say all this, you need not suppose that I am vindicating the Translation as a Piece of Verse. I remember thinking it from the first rather disagreeable than not: though with some good parts. Jam satis.”

That is the last mention of it and it was never printed in FitzGerald's lifetime. He might have said of this as he said of his Calderon translations: “All these things have been done partly as an amusement in a lonely life: partly to give some sort of idea of the originals to friends who knew them not.” And here also Crabbe's lines were applicable:—

“I might have made a Book, but that my Pride
In the not making was more gratified.”

It only remains to note the fact that Ferîdeddîn Attâr was born near the same Nishapûr where Omar Khayyâm spent his long life. The time of his birth is given as 1119. His father was a spicer and he is said to have followed the same trade, and to have taken his takhallus or Poetic name of Attâr from it. He afterwards became a mystic and a dervish. There is a legend to the effect that he was killed by a Tatar soldier in the invasion of Jengis Khan, having attained the age of 110. His chief works are “The Book of Council,” a series of didactic poems, “The Parliament of Birds,” and a prose history of the Mohamedan Saints.

NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.

Boston, June 23, 1899.

MY DEAR COWELL, Two years ago, when we began (I for the first time) to read this Poem together, I wanted you to translate it, as something that should interest a few who are worth interesting. You, however, did not see the way clear then, and had Aristotle pulling you by one Shoulder and Prakrit Vararuchi by the other, so as indeed to have hindered you up to this time completing a Version of Hafiz' best Odes which you had then happily begun. So, continuing to like old Jámí more and more, I must try my hand upon him; and here is my reduced Version of a small Original. What Scholarship it has is yours, my Master in Persian, and so much beside; who are no further answerable for all than by well liking and wishing publisht what you may scarce have Leisure to find due fault with. Had all the Poem been like Parts, it would have been all translated, and in such Prose lines as you measure Hafiz in, and such as any one should adopt who does not feel himself so much of a Poet as him he translates and some he translates for—before whom it is best to lay the raw material as genuine as may be, to work up to their own better Fancies. But, unlike Hafiz'best—(whose Sonnets are sometimes as close packt as Shakespeare's, which they resemble in more ways than one)—Jámí, you know, like his Countrymen generally, is very diffuse in what he tells and his way of telling it. The very structure of the Persian Couplet—(here, like people on the Stage, I am repeating to you what you know, with an Eye to the small Audience beyond) —so often ending with the same Word, or Two Words, if but the foregoing Syllable secure a lawful Rhyme, so often makes the Second Line but a slightly varied Repetition, or Modification of the First, and gets slowly over Ground often hardly worth gaining. This iteration is common indeed to the Hebrew Psalms and Proverbs—where, however, the Value of the Repetition is different. In your Hafiz also, not Two only, but Eight or Ten Lines perhaps are tied to the same Close of Two —or Three—words; a verbal Ingenuity as much valued in the East as better Thought. And how many of all the Odes called his, more and fewer in various Copies, do you yourself care to deal with? —And in the better ones how often some lines, as I think for this reason, unworthy of the Rest— interpolated perhaps from the Mouths of his many Devotees, Mystical and Sensual—or crept into Manuscripts of which he never arranged or corrected one from the First?

This, together with the confined Action of Persian Grammar, whose organic simplicity seems to me its difficulty when applied, makes the Line by Line Translation of a Poem not line by line precious tedious in proportion to its length. Especially— (what the Sonnet does not feel)—in the Narrative; which I found when once eased in its Collar, and yet missing somewhat of rhythmical Amble, somehow, and not without resistance on my part, swerved into that “easy road” of Verse—easiest as unbeset with any exigencies of Rhyme. Those little Stories, too, which you thought untractable, but which have their Use as well as Humour by way of quaint Interlude Music between the little Acts, felt ill at ease in solemn Lowth-Isaiah Prose, and had learn'd their tune, you know, before even Hiawatha came to teach people to quarrel about it. Till, one part drawing on another, the Whole grew to the present form. As for the much bodily omitted—it may be readily guessed that an Asiatic of the 15th Century might say much on such a subject that an Englishman of the 19th would not care to read. Not that our Jámí is ever licentious like his Contemporary Chaucer, nor like Chaucer's Posterity in Times that called themselves more Civil. But better Men will not now endure a simplicity of Speech that Worse men abuse. Then the many more, and foolisher, Stories—preliminary Te Deums to Allah and Allah's-shadow Sháh—very much about Alef Noses, Eyebrows like inverted Núns, drunken Narcissus Eyes—and that eternal Moon Face which never wanes from Persia—of all which there is surely enough in this Glimpse of the Original. No doubt some Oriental character escapes—the Story sometimes becomes too Skin and Bone without due interval of even Stupid and Bad. Of the two Evils? —At least what I have chosen is least in point of bulk; scarcely in proportion with the length of its Apology which, as usual, probably discharges one's own Conscience at too great a Price; people at once turning against you the Arms they might have wanted had you not laid them down. However it may be with this, I am sure a complete Translation —even in Prose—would not have been a readable one—which, after all, is a useful property of most Books, even of Poetry.

In studying the Original, you know, one gets contentedly carried over barren Ground in a new Land of Language—excited by chasing any new Game that will but show Sport; the most worthless to win asking perhaps all the sharper Energy to pursue, and so far yielding all the more Satisfaction when run down. Especially, cheered on as I was by such a Huntsman as poor Dog of a Persian Scholar never hunted with before; and moreover—but that was rather in the Spanish Sierras—by the Presence of a Lady in the Field, silently brightening about us like Aurora's Self, or chiming in with musical Encouragement that all we started and ran down must be Royal Game!

Ah, happy Days! When shall we Three meet again —when dip in that unreturning Tide of Time and Circumstance!—In those Meadows far from the World, it seemed, as Salámán's Island—before an Iron Railway broke the Heart of that Happy Valley whose Gossip was the Mill-wheel, and Visitors the Summer Airs that momentarily ruffled the sleepy Stream that turned it as they chased one another over to lose themselves in Whispers in the Copse beyond. Or returning—I suppose you remember whose Lines they are—

When Winter Skies were tinged with Crimson still
Where Thornbush nestles on the quiet hill
And the live Amber round the setting Sun,
Lighting the Labourer home whose Work is done,
Burn'd like a Golden Angel-ground above
The solitary Home of Peace and Love—

at such an hour drawing home together for a fireside Night of it with Æschylus or Calderon in the Cottage, whose walls, modest almost as those of the Poor who clustered—and with good reason— round, make to my Eyes the Towered Crown of Oxford hanging in the Horizon, and with all Honour won, but a dingy Vapour in Comparison. And now, should they beckon from the terrible Ganges, and this little Book begun as a happy Record of past, and pledge perhaps of future, Fellowship in Study, darken already with the shadow of everlasting Farewell!

But to turn from you Two to a Public—nearly as numerous—(with whom, by the way, this Letter may die without a name that you know very well how to supply),—here is the best I could make of Jámí's Poem—“Ouvrage de peu d'étendue,” says the “Biographie Universelle,” and, whatever that means, here collapsed into a nutshell Epic indeed; whose Story however, if nothing else, may interest some Scholars as one of Persian Mysticism—perhaps the grand Mystery of all Religions—an Allegory fairly devised and carried out—dramatically culminating as it goes on; and told as to this day the East loves to tell her Story, illustrated by Fables and Tales, so often (as we read in the latest Travcls) at the expense of the poor Arab of the Desert.

The Proper Names—and some other Words peculiar to the East—are printed as near as may be to their native shape and sound—“Sulaymán” for Solomon—“Yúsuf” for Joseph, &c., as being not only more musical, but retaining their Oriental flavour unalloyed with European Association. The accented Vowels are to be pronounced long, as in Italian—Salámán—Absál—Shírín, &c.

The Original is in rhymed Couplets of this measure—

which those who like Monkish Latin may remember in

Dum Salámán verba Regis cogitat,
Pectus intrá de profundis æstuat.

or in English—by way of asking, “your Clemency for us and for our Tragedy”—

Of Salámán and of Absál hear the Song;
Little wants Man here below, nor little long.

NÚRUDDÍN ABDURRAHMAN, Son of Mauláná Nizámuddín Ahmed, and descended on the Mother's side from One of the Four great “FATHERS” of Islam, was born A. H. 817, A. D. 1414, in Jám, a little Town of Khorásán, whither his Grandfather had removed from Desht of Ispa-hán and from which the poet ultimately took his Takhallus, or Poetic name, JÁMÍ. This word also signifies “A Cup;” wherefore, he says, “Born in Jám, and dipt in the “Jám” of Holy Lore, for a double reason I must be called JÁMÍ in the Book of Song.”

* He elsewhere plays upon his name, imploring God that he may be accepted as a Cup to pass about that Spiritual Wine of which the Persian Mystical Poets make so much.

When Five Years old he received the name of Nú-ruddín, the “Light of Faith,” and even so early began to show the Metal, and take the Stamp that distinguished him through Life. In 1419, a famous Sheikh, Khwájah Mohammed Pársá, then in the last Year of his Life, was being carried through Jám. “I was not then Five Years old,” says Jámí, “and my Father, who with his Friends went forth to salute him, had me carried on the Shoulders of one of the Family and set down before the Litter of the Sheikh, who gave a Nosegay into my hand. Sixty Years have passed, and methinks I now see before me the bright Image of the Holy Man, and feel the Blessing of his Aspect, from which I date my after Devotion to that Brotherhood in which I hope to be enrolled.”

So again, when Mauláná Fakhruddín Loristání had alighted at his Mother's house—“I was then so little that he set me upon his Knee, and with his Fingers drawing the Letters of ‘ALÍ’ and ‘OMAR’ in the Air, laughed with delight to hear me spell them. He also by his Goodness sowed in my Heàrt the Seed of his Devotion, which has grown to Increase within me—in which I hope to live, and in which to die. Oh God! Dervish let me live, and Dervish die; and in the Company of the Dervish do Thou quicken me to life again!”

Jámí first went to a School at Herát; and afterward to one founded by the Great Timúr at Sa-marcand. There he not only outstript his Fellow-students in the very Encyclopædic Studies of Persian Education, but even puzzled his Doctors in Logic, Astronomy, and Theology; who, however, with unresenting Gravity welcomed him—“Lo! a new Light added to our Galaxy!”—And among them in the wider Field of Samarcand he might have liked to remain, had not a Dream recalled him to Herát. A Vision of the Great Súfí Master there, Mohammed Saaduddín Káshgharí, appeared to him in his Sleep, and bade him return to One who would satisfy all Desire. Jámí returned to Herát; he saw the Sheikh discoursing with his Disciples by the Door of the Great Mosque; day after day passed him by without daring to present himself; but the Master's Eye was upon him; day by day drew him nearer and nearer—till at last the Sheikh announces to those about him—“Lo! this Day have I taken a Falcon in my Snare!”

Under him Jámí began his Súfí Noviciate, with such Devotion, both to Study and Master, that going, he tells us, but for one Summer Holiday into the Country, a single Line sufficed to “lure the Tassel-gentle back again;”

“Lo! here am I, and Thou look'st on the Rose!”

By and by he withdrew, by due course of Súfí Instruction, into Solitude so long and profound, that on his return to Men he had almost lost the Power of Converse with them. At last, when duly taught, and duly authorized to teach as Súfí Doctor, he yet would not take upon himself so to do, though solicited by those who had seen such a Vision of him as had drawn himself to Herát; and not till the Evening of his Life was he to be seen taking that place by the Mosque which his departed Master had been used to occupy before.

Meanwhile he had become Poet, which no doubt winged his Reputation and Doctrine far and wide through a People so susceptible of poetic impulse. “A Thousand times,” he says, “I have repented of such Employment; but I could no more shirk it than one can shirk what the Pen of Fate has written on his Forehead”—“As Poet I have resounded through the World; Heaven filled itself with my Song, and the Bride of Time adorned her Ears and Neck with the Pearls of my Verse, whose coming Caravan the Persian Hafiz and Saadí came forth gladly to salute, and the Indian Khosrau and Hasan hailed as a Wonder of the World.” “The Kings of India and Rúm greet me by Letter: the Lords of Irák and Tabríz load me with Gifts; and what shall I say of those of Khorásán, who drown me in an Ocean of Munificence?”

This, though Oriental, is scarcely bombast. Jámí was honoured by Princes at home and abroad, at the very time they were cutting one another's Throats; by his own Sultan Abú Saïd; by Hasan Beg of Mesopotamia—“Lord of Tabríz”—by whom Abú Saïd was defeated, dethroned, and slain; by Mohammed II. of Turkey—“King of Rúm”—who in his turn defeated Hasan; and lastly by Husein Mírzá Bai-kará, who somehow made away with the Prince whom Hasan had set up in Abú Saïd's Place at Herát. Such is the House that Jack builds in Persia.

As Hasan Beg, however—the USUNCASSAN of old European Annals—is singularly connected with the present Poem, and with probably the most important event in Jámí's Life, I will briefly follow the Steps that led to that as well as other Princely Intercourse.

In A. H. 877, A. D. 1472, Jámí set off on his Pilgrimage to Mecca, as every True Believer who could afford it was expected once in his Life to do. He and, on his Account, the Caravan he went with, were honourably and safely escorted through the interjacent Countries by order of their several Potentates as far as Baghdád. There Jámí fell into trouble by the Treachery of a Follower whom he had reproved, and who misquoted his Verse into disparagement of ALÍ, the Darling Imám of Persia. This, getting wind at Baghdád, was there brought to solemn Tribunal. Jámí came victoriously off; his Accuser was pilloried with a dockt Beard in Baghdád Market-place: but the Poet was so ill pleased with the stupidity of those who had believed the Report, that, in an after poem, he called for a Cup of Wine to seal up Lips of whose Utterance the Men of Bagh-dád were unworthy.

After four months' stay there, during which he visited at Helleh the Tomb of Alí's Son Husein, who had fallen at Kerbela, he set forth again—to Najaf, (where he says his Camel sprang forward at sight of Alí's own Tomb)—crossed the Desert in twenty-two days, continually meditating on the Prophet's Glory, to Medina; and so at last to MECCA, where, as he sang in a Ghazal, he went through all Mohammedan Ceremony with a Mystical Understanding of his Own.

He then turned Homeward: was entertained for forty-five days at Damascus, which he left the very Day before the Turkish Mohammed's Envoys came with 5,000 Ducats to carry him to Constantinople. On arriving at Amida, the Capital of Mesopotamia, he found War broken out and in full Flame between that Sultan and Hasan Beg, King of the Country, who caused Jámí to be honourably escorted through the dangerous Roads to Tabríz; there received him in full Díván, and would fain have him abide at his Court awhile. Jámí, however, was intent on Home, and once more seeing his aged Mother—for he was turned of Sixty—and at last reached Herát in the Month of Shaabán, 1473, after the Average Year's absence.

This is the HASAN, “in Name and Nature Hand- some” (and so described by some Venetian Ambassadors of the Time), who was Father of YAKÚB BEG, to whom Jámí dedicated the following Poem; and who, after the due murder of an Elder Brother, succeeded to the Throne; till all the Dynasties of “Black and White Sheep” together were swept away a few years after by Ismail, Founder of the Sofí Dynasty in Persia.

Arrived at home, Jámí found Husein Mírzá Bai-kará, last of the Timuridæ, seated on the Throne there, and ready to receive him with open Arms. Nizámuddín Alí Shír, Husein's Vizír, a Poet too, had hailed in Verse the Poet's Advent from Damascus as “The Moon rising in the West;” and they both continued affectionately to honour him as long as he lived.

Jámí sickened of his mortal Illness on the 13th of Moharrem, 1492—a Sunday. His Pulse began to fail on the following Friday, about the Hour of Morning Prayer, and stopped at the very moment when the Muezzin began to call to Evening. He had lived Eighty-One Years. Sultan Husein undertook the pompous Burial of one whose Glory it was to have lived and died in Dervish Poverty; the Dignitaries of the Kingdom followed him to the Grave; where twenty days afterward was recited in presence of the Sultan and his Court an Eulogy composed by the Vizír, who also laid the first Stone of a Monument to his Friend's Memory—the first Stone of “Tarbet'i Jámí,” in the Street of Mesh-hed, a principal Thoro'fare of the City of Herát. For, says Rosenzweig, it must be kept in mind that Jámí was reverenced not only as a Poet and Philosopher, but as a Saint also; who not only might work a Miracle himself, but leave such a Power lingering about his Tomb. It was known that an Arab, who had falsely accused him of selling a Camel he knew to be unsound, died very shortly after, as Jámí had predicted, and on the very selfsame spot where the Camel fell. And that libellous Rogue at Baghdád—he, putting his hand into his Horse's Nose-bag to see if the beast had finisht his Corn, had his Forefinger bitten off by the same—from which “Verstümmlung” he soon died—I suppose, as he ought, of Lock-jaw.

The Persians, who are adepts at much elegant Ingenuity, are fond of commemorating Events by some analogous Word or Sentence whose Letters, cabalistically corresponding to certain Numbers, compose the Date required. In Jámí's case they have hit upon the word “KAS,” A Cup, whose signification brings his own name to Memory, and whose relative letters make up his 81 years. They have Táríkhs also for remembering the Year of his Death: Rosen-zweig gives some; but Ouseley the prettiest of all;—

Dúd az Khorásán bar ámed—
“The smoke” of Sighs “went up from Khorásán.”

No Biographer, says Rosenzweig cautiously, records . of Jámí's having more than one Wife (Granddaughter of his Master Sheikh) and Four Sons; which, however, are Five too many for the Doctrine of this Poem. Of the Sons, Three died Infant; and the Fourth (born to him in very old Age), and for whom he wrote some Elementary Tracts, and the more famous “Beháristán,” lived but a few years, and was remembered by his Father in the Preface to his Khi-radnáma-i Iskander—Alexander's Wisdom-book —which perhaps had also been begun for the Boy's Instruction. He had likewise a nephew, one Mauláná Abdullah, who was ambitious of following his Uncle's Footsteps in Poetry. Jámí first dissuaded him; then, by way of trial whether he had a Talent as well as a Taste, bade him imitate Firdausí's Satire on Sháh Mahmúd. The Nephew did so well, that Jámí then encouraged him to proceed; himself wrote the first Couplet of his First (and most celebrated) Poem—Laila and Majnún—

This Book of which the Pen has now laid the Foundation,
May the diploma of Acceptance one day befall it,—

and Abdullah went on to write that and four other Poems which Persia continues to delight in to the present day, remembering their Author under his Takhallus of HÁTIFÍ—“The Voice from Heaven” —and Last of the classic Poets of Persia.

Of Jámí's literary Offspring, Rosenzweig numbers forty-four. But Shír Khán Lúdí in his “Memoirs of the Poets,” says Ouseley, accounts him Author of Ninety-nine Volumes of Grammar, Poetry, and Theology, which, he says, “continue to be universally admired in all parts of the Eastern World, Írán, Túrán, and Hindústán”—copied some of them into precious Manuscripts, illuminated with Gold and Painting, by the greatest Penmen and Artists of the time; one such—the “Beháristán”— said to have cost some thousands of pounds—autographed as their own by two Sovereign Descendants of TIMÚR; and now reposited away from “the Drums and Tramplings” of Oriental Conquest in the tranquil seclusion of an English library.

With us, his Name is almost wholly associated with his “Yúsuf and Zulaikhá;” the “Beháristán” aforesaid: and this present “Salámán and Absál,” which he tells us is like to be the last product of his Old Age. And these three Poems count for three of the brother Stars of that Constellation into which his seven best Mystical Poems are clustered under the name of “HEFT AURANG”—those “SEVEN THRONES” to which we of the West and North give our characteristic name of “Great Bear” and “Charles's Wain.”

This particular Salámán Star, which thus conspicuously figures in Eastern eyes, but is reduced to one of very inferior magnitude as seen through this English Version,—is one of many Allegories under which the Persian Mystic symbolized an esoteric doctrine which he dared not—and probably could not—more intelligibly reveal. As usual with such Poems in the story-loving East, the main Fable is intersected at every turn with some other subsidiary story, more or less illustrative of the matter in hand: many of these of a comic and grotesque Character mimicking the more serious, as may the Gracioso of the Spanish Drama. As for the metre of the Poem, it is the same as that adopted by Attár, Jelá-luddín and other such Poets—and styled, as I have heard, the “Metre Royal”—although not having been used by Firdausí for his Sháh-námeh. Thus it runs:

a pace which, to those not used to it, seems to bring one up with too sudden a halt at the end of every line to promise easy travelling through an Epic. It may be represented in Monkish Latin Quantity:

Dum Salámán verba Regis cogitat,
Pectus illi de profundis æstuat;

or by English accent in two lines that may also plead for us and our Allegory:

Of Salámán and of Absál hear the Song;
Little wants man here below, nor little long.

OH Thou, whose Spirit through this universe,
In which Thou dost involve thyself diffused,
Shall so perchance irradiate human clay
That men, suddenly dazzled, lose themselves
In ecstasy before a mortal shrine
Whose Light is but a Shade of the Divine;
Not till thy Secret Beauty through the cheek
Of LAILA smite doth she inflame MAJNÚN;

* Well-known types of Eastern Lovers. SHÍRÍN and her Suitors figure in Sect. XX.

From the solitary Desert
Up to Baghdád came a simple
Arab; there amid the rout
Grew bewildered of the countless
People, hither, thither, running,
Coming, going, meeting, parting,
Clamour, clatter, and confusion,
All about him and about.
Travel-wearied, hubbub-dizzy,
Would the simple Arab fain
Get to sleep—“But then, on waking,
“How,” quoth he, “amid so many
“Waking know Myself again?”
So, to make the matter certain,
Strung a gourd about his ankle,
And, into a corner creeping,
Baghdád and Himself and People
Soon were blotted from his brain.
But one that heard him and divined
His purpose, slily crept behind;
From the Sleeper's ankle clipping,
Round his own the pumpkin tied,
And laid him down to sleep beside.
By and by the Arab waking
Looks directly for his Signal—
Sees it on another's Ankle—
Cries aloud, “Oh Good-for-nothing
“Rascal to perplex me so!
“That by you I am bewilder'd,
“Whether I be I or no!
“If I—the Pumpkin why on YOU?
“If YOU—then Where am I, and WHO?”

AND yet, how long, O Jámí, stringing Verse,
Pearl after pearl, on that old Harp of thine?
Year after year attuning some new Song,
The breath of some old Story?

* “Yúsuf and Zulaikhá,” “Laila and Majnún,” etc.

One who travell'd in the Desert
Saw MAJNÚN where he was sitting
All alone like a Magician
Tracing Letters in the Sand.
“Oh distracted Lover! writing
“What the Sword-wind of the Desert
“Undeciphers so that no one
“After you shall understand.”
MAJNÚN answer'd—“I am writing
“Only for myself, and only
“‘LAILA,’—if for ever ‘LAILA’
“Writing in that Word a Volume,
“Over which for ever poring,
“From her very Name I sip
“In Fancy, till I drink, her Lip.”

A SHÁH there was who ruled the realm of Yún,

* Or “YAVAN,” Son of Japhet, from whom the country was called “YÚNAN”—IONIA, meant by the Persians to express Greece generally. Sikander is of course, Alexander the Great.

God said to the Prophet David—
“David, whom I have exalted
“From the sheep to be my People's
“Shepherd, by your Justice my
“Revelations justify.
“Lest the misbelieving—yea,
“The Fire-adoring Princes rather
“Be my Prophets, who fulfil,
“Knowing not my WORD, my WILL.”

ONE night THE SHÁH of Yúman as he sate
Contemplating his measureless extent
Of Empire, and the glory wherewithal,
As with a garment robed, he ruled alone;
Then found he nothing wanted to his heart
Unless a Son, who, while he lived, might share,
And, after him, his robe of Empire wear.
And then he turned him to THE SAGE, and said:
“O Darling of the soul of IFLATÚN;

* Iflatún, Plato: Aristo, Aristotle: both renowned in the East to this Day. For the Ten Intelligences, see Appendix.

When the shrewd SAGE had heard THE SHÁH's discourse
In commendation of a Son, he said:
“Thus much of a Good Son, whose wholesome growth
“Approves the root he grew from. But for one
“Kneaded of Evil—well, could one revoke
“His generation, and as early pull
“Him and his vices from the string of Time.
“Like Noah's, puff'd with insolence and pride,
“Who, reckless of his Father's warning call,
“Was by the voice of ALLAH from the door
“Of refuge in his Father's Ark debarr'd,
“And perish'd in the Deluge.

* See Note in Appendix I.

Sick at heart for want of Children,
Ran before the Saint a Fellow,
Catching at his garment, crying,
“Master, hear and help me! Pray
“That ALLAH from the barren clay
“Raise me up a fresh young Cypress,
“Who my longing eyes may lighten,
“And not let me like a vapour
“Unremembered pass away.”
But the Dervish said—“Consider;
“Wisely let the matter rest
“In the hands of ALLAH wholly,
“Who, whatever we are after,
“Understands our business best.”
Still the man persisted—“Master,
“I shall perish in my longing:
“Help, and set my prayer a-going!”
Then the Dervish raised his hand—
From the mystic Hunting-land
Of Darkness to the Father's arms
A musky Fawn of China drew—
A Boy—who, when the shoot of Passion
In his Nature planted grew,
Took to drinking, dicing, drabbing.
From a corner of the house-top
Ill-insulting honest women,
Dagger-drawing on the husband;
And for many a city-brawl
Still before the Cadi summon'd,
Still the Father pays for all.
Day and night the youngster's doings
Such—the city's talk and scandal;
Neither counsel, threat, entreaty,
Moved him—till the desperate Father
Once more to the Dervish running,
Catches at his garment—crying—
“Oh my only Hope and Helper!
“One more Prayer! That God, who laid,
“Would take this trouble from my head!”
But the Saint replied “Remember
“How that very Day I warn'd you
“Not with blind petition ALLAH
“Trouble to your own confusion;
“Unto whom remains no more
“To pray for, save that He may pardon
“What so rashly prayed before.”

“So much for the result; and for the means—
“Oh SHÁH, who would not be himself a slave,
“Which SHÁH least should, and of an appetite
“Among the basest of his slaves enslaved—
“Better let Azrael find him on his throne
“Of Empire sitting childless and alone,
“Than his untainted Majesty resign
“To that seditious drink, of which one draught
“Still for another and another craves,
“Till it become a noose to draw the Crown
“From off thy brows—about thy lips a ring,
“Of which the rope is in a Woman's hand,
“To lead thyself the road of Nothing down.
“For what is She? A foolish, faithless thing—
“A very Káfir in rapacity;
“Robe her in all the rainbow-tinted woof
“Of Susa, shot with rays of sunny Gold;
“Deck her with jewel thick as Night with star;
“Pamper her appetite with Houri fruit
“Of Paradise, and fill her jewell'd cup
“From the green-mantled Prophet's Well of Life—
“One little twist of temper—all your cost
“Goes all for nothing: and, as for yourself—
“Look! On your bosom she may lie for years;
“But, get you gone a moment out of sight,
“And she forgets you—worse, if, as you turn,
“Her eyes on any younger Lover light.”

Once upon the Throne together
Telling one another Secrets,
Sate SULAYMÁN and BALKÍS;

* Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, who, it appears, is no worse in one way than Solomon in another, unless in Oriental Eyes.

The Hearts of both were turn'd to Truth
Unsullied by Deception.
First the King of Faith SULAYMÁN
Spoke—“However just and wise
“Reported, none of all the many
“Suitors to my palace thronging
“But afar I scrutinize;
“And He who comes not empty-handed
“Grows to Honour in mine Eyes.”
After this, BALKÍS a Secret
From her hidden bosom utter'd,
Saying—“Never night or morning
“Comely Youth before me passes
“Whom I look not after, longing”—

“If this, as wise Firdausí says, the curse
“Of better women, what then of the worse?”
THE SAGE his satire ended; and THE SHÁH,
Determined on his purpose, but the means
Resigning to Supreme Intelligence,
With Magic-mighty Wisdom his own WILL
Colleagued, and wrought his own accomplishment.
For Lo! from Darkness came to Light A CHILD,
Of carnal composition unattaint;
A Perfume from the realm of Wisdom wafted;
A Rosebud blowing on the Royal stem;
The crowning Jewel of the Crown; a Star
Under whose augury triumph'd the Throne.
For whom dividing, and again in one
Whole perfect Jewel re-uniting, those
Twin Jewel-words, SALÁMAT and ASMÁN,

* SALÁMAT, Security from evil; ASMÁN, Heaven.

Opening and closing which her day's delight,
To gaze upon his heart-inflaming cheek,—
Upon the Babe whom, if she could, she would
Have cradled as the Baby of her eye.

* Literally, Mardumak—the Mannikin, or Pupil, of the Eye, corresponding to the Image so frequently used by our old Poets.

And still as Morning came, and as he grew
Finer than any bridal-puppet, which
To prove another's love a woman sends,

* See Appendix.

So for seven years she rear'd and tended him:
Nay, when his still-increasing moon of Youth
Into the further Sign of Manhood pass'd,
Pursued him yet, till full fourteen his years,
Fourteen-day full the beauty of his face,
That rode high in a hundred thousand hearts
For, when SALÁMÁN was but half-lance high,
Lance-like he struck a wound in every one,
And shook down splendour round him like a Sun.

SOON as the Lord of Heav'n had sprung his horse
Over horizon into the blue field,
SALÁMÁN kindled with the wine of sleep,
Mounted a barb of fire for the Maidán;
He and a troop of Princes—Kings in blood,
Kings in the kingdom-troubling trible of beauty,
All young in years and courage,

* The same Persian Word signifying Youth and Courage.

WHEN night came, that releases man from toil,
He play'd the chess of social intercourse;
Prepared his banquet-hall like Paradise,
Summon'd his Houri-faced musicians,
And, when his brain grew warm with wine, the veil
Flung off him of reserve: taking a harp,
Between its dry string and his finger quick
Struck fire: or catching up a lute, as if
A child for chastisement, would pinch its ear
To wailing that should agéd eyes make weep.
Now like the Nightingale he sang alone;
Now with another lip to lip; and now
Together blending voice and instrument;
And thus with his associates night he spent.

His Soul rejoiced in knowledge of all kind;
The fine edge of his Wit would split a hair,
And in the noose of apprehension catch
A meaning ere articulate in word;
Close as the knitted jewel of Parwín
His jewel Verse he strung; his Rhetoric
Enlarging like the Mourners of the Bier.

* The Pleiades and the Great Bear. This is otherwise prettily applied in the Anvári Soheili—“When one grows poor, his Friends, heretofore compact as THE PLEIADES, disperse wide asunder as THE MOURNERS.”

His Bounty like a Sea was fathomless
That bubbled up with jewel, and flung pearl
Where'er it touch'd, but drew not back again;
It was a Heav'n that rain'd on all below
Dirhems for drops—

Arrested and rebuked me—“Foolish Jámí!
“Wearing that indefatigable pen
“In celebration of an alien SHÁH
“Whose Throne, not grounded in the Eternal World,
“If YESTERDAY it were, TO-DAY is not,
“TO-MORROW cannot be.”

* The Hero of the Story being of YÚNAN—IONIA, or Greece generally (the Persian Geography not being very precise) —and so not of THE FAITH.

Sate a Lover in a garden
All alone, apostrophizing
Many a flower and shrub about him,
And the lights of Heav'n above.
Nightingaling thus, a Noodle
Heard him, and, completely puzzled,
“What,” quoth he, “and you a Lover,
“Raving, not about your Mistress,
“But about the stars and roses—
“What have these to do with Love?”
Answer'd he; “Oh thou that aimest
“Wide of Love, and Lovers' language
“Wholly misinterpreting;
“Sun and Moon are but my Lady's
“Self, as any Lover knows;
“Hyacinth I said, and meant her
“Hair—her cheek was in the rose—
“And I myself the wretched weed
“That in her cypress shadow grows.”

AND now the cypress stature of Salámán
Had reached his top, and now to blossom full
The garden of his Beauty: and Absál,
Fairest of hers, as of his fellows he
The fairest, long'd to gather from the tree.
But, for that flower upon the lofty stem
Of Glory grew to which her hand fell short,
She now with woman's sorcery began
To conjure as she might within her reach.
The darkness of her eyes she darken'd round
With surma, to benight him in mid day,
And over them adorn'd and arch'd the bows

* With dark Indigo-Paint, as the Archery Bow with a thin Papyrus-like Bark.

Burning with her love ZULAIKHÁ
Built a chamber, wall and ceiling
Blank as an untarnisht mirror,
Spotless as the heart of YÚSUF.
Then she made a cunning painter
Multiply her image round it;
Not an inch of wall or ceiling
But re-echoing her beauty.
Then amid them all in all her
Glory sat she down, and sent for
YÚSUF—she began a tale
Of Love—and lifted up her veil.
Bashfully beneath her burning
Eyes he turn'd away; but turning
Wheresoever, still about him
Saw ZULAIKHÁ, still ZULAIKHÁ,
Still, without a veil, ZULAIKHÁ.
But a voice as if from Canaan
Call'd him; and a Hand from Darkness
Touch'd; and ere a living Lip
Through the mirage of bewilder'd
Eyes seduced him, he recoil'd,
And let the skirt of danger slip.

ALAS for those who having tasted once
Of that forbidden vintage of the lips
That, press'd and pressing, from each other draw
The draught that so intoxicates them both,
That, while upon the wings of Day and Night
Time rustles on, and Moons do wax and wane,
As from the very Well of Life they drink,
And, drinking, fancy they shall never drain.
But rolling Heaven from his ambush whispers,
“So in my license is it not set down:
“Ah for the sweet societies I make
“At Morning, and before the Nightfall break,
“Ah for the bliss that coming Night fills up,
“And Morn looks in to find an empty Cup!”

Once in Baghdád a poor Arab,
After weary days of fasting,
Into the Khalífah's banquet-
Chamber, where, aloft in State
HARÚN the Great at supper sate,
Push'd and pushing, with the throng,
Got before a perfume-breathing
Pasty, like the lip of SHÍRÍN
Luscious, or the Poet's song.
Soon as seen, the famisht clown
Seizes up and swallows down.
Then his mouth undaunted wiping—
“Oh Khalífah, hear me swear,
“While I breathe the dust of Baghdád,
“Ne'er at any other Table
“Than at Thine to sup or dine.”
Grimly laugh'd HARÚN, and answer'd;
“Fool! who think'st to arbitrate
“What is in the hands of Fate—
“Take, and thrust him from the Gate!”

WHILE a full Year was counted by the Moon,
SALÁMÁN and ABSÁL rejoiced together,
And neither SHÁH nor SAGE his face beheld.
They question'd those about him, and from them
Heard something: then himself to presence summon'd,
And all the truth was told. Then SAGE and SHÁH
Struck out with hand and foot in his redress.
And first with REASON, which is also best;
REASON that rights the wanderer; that completes
The imperfect; REASON that resolves the knot
Of either world, and sees beyond the Veil.
For REASON is the fountain from of old
From which the Prophets drew, and none beside:
Who boasts of other inspiration, lies—
There are no other Prophets than THE WISE.

AND first THE SHÁH:—“SALÁMÁN, Oh my Soul,
“Light of the eyes of my Prosperity,
“And making bloom the court of Hope with rose;
“Year after year, SÁLAMÁN, like a bud
“That cannot blow, my own blood I devour'd,
“Till, by the seasonable breath of God,
“At last I blossom'd into thee, my Son;
“Oh, do not wound me with a dagger thorn;
“Let not the full-blown rose of Royalty
“Be left to wither in a hand unclean.
“For what thy proper pastime? Bat in hand
“To mount and manage RAKHSH

* “Lightning.” The name of RUSTAM'S famous Horse in the SHÁH-NÁMEH.

When before SHIRÚYEH'S dagger
KAI KHUSRAU,

† KHUSRAU PARVÍZ (Chosroe The Victorious), Son of NOSH-ÍRVÁN The Great; slain, after Thirty Years of prosperous Reign, by his Son SHÍRÚYEH, who, according to some, was in love with his Father's mistress SHÍRÍN. See further on one of the most dramatic Tragedies in Persian history.

his Father, fell,
He declared this Parable—
“Wretch!—There was a branch that waxing
“Wanton o'er the root he drank from,
“At a draught the living water
“Drain'd wherewith himself to crown;
“Died the root—and with him died
“The branch—and barren was brought down!”

THE SHÁH ceased counsel, and THE SAGE began.
“Oh last new vintage of the Vine of Life
“Planted in Paradise; Oh Master-stroke,
“And all-concluding flourish of the Pen
“KUN FA YAKÚN;

* “BE! AND IT IS”—The famous Word of Creation stolen from Genesis by the Kurán.

Quoth a Muezzín to the crested
Cock—“Oh Prophet of the Morning,
“Never Prophet like to you
“Prophesied of Dawn, nor Muezzín
“With so shrill a voice of warning
“Woke the sleeper to confession
“Crying, ‘LÁ ALLAH ILLÁ 'LLAH,
“MUHAMMAD RASÚLUHU.’

* “There is no God but God; Muhammad is his Prophet.”

“One, methinks, so rarely gifted
“Should have prophesied and sung
“In Heav'n, the Birds of Heav'n among,
“Not with these poor hens about him,
“Raking in a heap of dung.”
“And,” replied the Cock, “in Heaven
“Once I was; but by my foolish
“Lust to this uncleanly living
“With my sorry mates about me
“Thus am fallen. Otherwise,
“I were prophesying Dawn
“Before the gates of Paradise.”

† Jámí, as, may be, other Saintly Doctors, kept soberly to one Wife. But wherefore, under the Law of Muhammad, should the Cock be selected (as I suppose he is) for a “Caution,” because of his indulgence in Polygamy, however unusual among Birds?

OF all the Lover's sorrows, next to that
Of Love by Love forbidden, is the voice
Of Friendship turning harsh in Love's reproof,
And overmuch of Counsel—whereby Love
Grows stubborn, and recoiling unsupprest
Within, devours the heart within the breast.
SALÁMÁN heard; his Soul came to his lips;
Reproaches struck not ABSÁL out of him,
But drove Confusion in; bitter became
The drinking of the sweet draught of Delight
And waned the splendour of his Moon of Beauty.
His breath was Indignation, and his heart
Bled from the arrow, and his anguish grew.
How bear it?—By the hand of Hatred dealt,
Easy to meet—and deal with, blow for blow;
But from Love's hand which one must not requite,
And cannot yield to—what resource but Flight?
Resolved on which, he victuall'd and equipp'd
A Camel, and one night he led it forth,
And mounted—he with ABSÁL at his side,
Like sweet twin almonds in a single shell.
And Love least murmurs at the narrow space
That draws him close and closer in embrace.

When the Moon of Canaan YÚSUF
In the prison of Egypt darken'd,
Nightly from her spacious Palace-
Chamber, and its rich array,
Stole ZULAIKHÁ like a fantom
To the dark and narrow dungeon
Where her buried Treasure lay.
Then to those about her wond'ring—
“Were my Palace,” she replied,
“Wider than Horizon-wide,
“It were narrower than an Ant's eye,
“Were my Treasure not inside:
“And an Ant's eye, if but there
“My Lover, Heaven's horizon were.”

SIX days SALÁMÁN on the Camel rode,
And then the hissing arrows of reproof
Were fallen far behind; and on the Seventh
He halted on the Seashore; on the shore
Of a great Sea that reaching like a floor
Of rolling Firmament below the Sky's
From KÁF to KÁF, to GAU and MÁHÍ

* Bull and Fish—the lowest Substantial Base of Earth. “He first made the Mountains; then cleared the Face of the Earth from Sea; then fixed it fast on Gau; Gau on Máhí; and Máhí on Air; and Air on what? on NOTHING; Nothing on Nothing, all is Nothing—Enough.” Attár; quoted in De Sacy's Pendnamah, xxxv.

SALÁMÁN eyed the moving wilderness
On which he thought, once launcht, no foot, nor eye
Should ever follow; forthwith he devised
Of sundry scented woods along the shore
A little shallop like a Quarter-moon,
Wherein ABSÁL and He like Sun and Moon
Enter'd as into some Celestial Sign;
That, figured like a bow, but arrow-like
In flight, was feather'd with a little sail,
And, pitcht upon the water like a duck,
So with her bosom sped to her Desire.

When they had sail'd their vessel for a Moon,
And marr'd their beauty with the wind o' the Sea,
Suddenly in mid sea reveal'd itself
An Isle, beyond imagination fair;
An Isle that all was Garden; not a Flower,
Nor Bird of plumage like the flower, but there;
Some like the Flower, and others like the Leaf;
Some, as the Pheasant and the Dove adorn'd
With crown and collar, over whom, alone,
The jewell'd Peacock like a Sultan shone;
While the Musicians, and among them Chief
The Nightingale, sang hidden in the trees
Which, arm in arm, from fingers quivering
With any breath of air, fruit of all kind
Down scatter'd in profusion to their feet,
Where fountains of sweet water ran between,
And Sun and shadow chequer-chased the green.
Here Iram-garden seem'd in secresy
Blowing the rosebud of its Revelation;

* Note in Appendix.

SALÁMÁN saw the Isle, and thought no more
Of Further—there with ABSÁL he sate down,
ABSÁL and He together side by side
Together like the Lily and the Rose,
Together like the Soul and Body, one.
Under its trees in one another's arms
They slept—they drank its fountains hand in hand—
Paraded with the Peacock—raced the Partridge—
Chased the green Parrot for his stolen fruit,
Or sang divisions with the Nightingale.
There was the Rose without a thorn, and there
The Treasure and no Serpent

* The supposed guardian of buried treasure.

Said to WÁMIK one who never
Knew the Lover's passion—“Why
“Solitary thus and silent
“Solitary places haunting,
“Like a Dreamer, like a Spectre,
“Like a thing about to die?”
WÁMIK answer'd—“Meditating
“Flight with Azrá

† Wámik and Azrá (Virgin) two typical Lovers.

to the Desert:
“There by so remote a Fountain
“That, whichever way one travell'd,
“League on league, one yet should never
“See the face of Man; for ever
“There to gaze on my Belovéd;
“Gaze, till Gazing out of Gazing
“Grew to Being Her I gaze on,
“SHE and I no more, but in One
“Undivided Being blended.
“All that is by Nature twain
“Fears, or suffers by, the pain
“Of Separation: Love is only
“Perfect when itself transcends
“Itself, and, one with that it loves,
“In undivided Being blends.”

WHEN by and by the SHÁH was made aware
Of that heart-breaking Flight, his royal robe
He changed for ashes, and his Throne for dust,
And wept awhile in darkness and alone.
Then rose; and, taking counsel from the SAGE,
Pursuit set everywhere afoot: but none
Could trace the footstep of the flying Deer.
Then from his secret Art the Sage-Vizyr
A Magic Mirror made; a Mirror like
The bosom of All-wise Intelligence
Reflecting in its mystic compass all
Within the sev'n-fold volume of the World
Involved; and, looking in that Mirror's face,
The SHÁH beheld the face of his Desire.
Beheld those Lovers, like that earliest pair
Of Lovers, in this other Paradise
So far from human eyes in the mid sea,
And yet within the magic glass so near
As with a finger one might touch them, isled.
THE SHÁH beheld them; and compassion touch'd
His eyes and anger died upon his lips;
And arm'd with Righteous Judgment as he was,
Yet, seeing those two Lovers with one lip
Drinking that cup of Happiness and Tears

* *krath=ra makro\n h(donh=s kai\ dakru/wn
*kirnw=ntes e)ce/pinon a)/xris e)s me/qhn.
From Theodorus Prodromus, as quoted by Sir W. Jones.

The Lords of Wrath have perish'd by the blow
Themselves had aim'd at others long ago.
Draw not in haste the sword, which Fate, may be,
Will sheathe, hereafter to be drawn on Thee.

FARHÁD, who the shapeless mountain
Into human likeness moulded,
Under SHÍRÍN'S eyes as slavish
Potters' earth himself became.

Then the secret fire of jealous
Frenzy, catching and devouring
KAI KHUSRAU, broke into flame.

With that ancient Hag of Darkness
Plotting, at the midnight Banquet
FARHÁD'S golden cup he poison'd,
And in SHÍRÍN'S eyes alone
Reign'd—But Fate that Fate revenges,
Arms SHÍRÚYEH with the dagger
That at once from SHÍRÍN tore,
And hurl'd him lifeless from his throne.

* One story is that Khusrau had promised that if Farhád cut through a Mountain, and brought a Stream through, Shírín should be his. Farhád was on the point of achieving his work, when Khusrau sent an old Woman (here, perhaps, purposely confounded with Fate) to tell him Shírín was dead; whereon Farhád threw himself headlong from the Rock. The Sculpture at Beysitún (or Besitún), where Rawlinson has deciphered Darius and Xerxes, was traditionally called Farhád's.

BUT as the days went on, and still THE SHÁH
Beheld his Son how in the Woman lost,
And still the Crown that should adorn his head,
And still the Throne that waited for his foot,
Both trampled under by a base desire,
Of which the Soul was still unsatisfied—
Then from the sorrow of THE SHÁH fell Fire;
To Gracelessness ungracious he became,
And, quite to shatter that rebellious lust,
Upon SALÁMÁN all his WILL, with all

* He Mesmerizes him!—See also further on this Power of the WILL.

One was asking of a Teacher,
“How a Father his reputed
“Son for his should recognize?”
Said the Master, “By the stripling,
“As he grows to manhood, growing
“Like to his reputed Father,
“Good or Evil, Fool or Wise.

“Lo the disregarded Darnel
“With itself adorns the Wheat-field,
“And for all the vernal season
“Satisfies the farmer's eye;
“But the hour of harvest coming,
“And the thrasher by and by,
“Then a barren ear shall answer,
“‘Darnel, and no Wheat, am I.’”

YET Ah for that poor Lover! “Next the curse
“Of Love by Love forbidden, nothing worse
“Than Friendship turn'd in Love's reproof unkind,
“And Love from Love divorcing”—Thus I said:
Alas, a worse, and worse, is yet behind—
Love's back-blow of Revenge for having fled!

SALÁMÁN bow'd his forehead to the dust
Before his Father; to his Father's hand
Fast—but yet fast, and faster, to his own
Clung one, who by no tempest of reproof
Or wrath might be dissever'd from the stem
She grew to: till, between Remorse and Love,
He came to loathe his Life and long for Death.
And, as from his She would not be divorced,
With Her he fled again: he fled—but now
To no such Island centred in the sea
As lull'd them into Paradise before;
But to the Solitude of Desolation,
The Wilderness of Death. And as before
Of sundry scented woods along the shore
A shallop he devised to carry them
Over the waters whither foot nor eye
Should ever follow them, he thought—so now
Of sere wood strewn about the plain of Death,
A raft to bear them through the wave of Fire
Into Annihilation, he devised,
Gather'd, and built; and, firing with a Torch,
Into the central flame ABSÁL and He
Sprung hand in hand exulting. But the SAGE
In secret all had order'd; and the Flame,
Directed by his self-fulfilling WILL,
Devouring Her to ashes, left untouch'd
SALÁMÁN—all the baser metal burn'd,
And to itself the authentic Gold return'd.

FROM the Beginning such has been the Fate
Of Man, whose very clay was soak'd in tears.
For when at first of common Earth they took,
And moulded to the stature of the Soul,
For Forty days, full Forty days, the cloud
Of Heav'n wept over him from head to foot:
And when the Forty days had passed to Night,
The Sunshine of one solitary day
Look'd out of Heav'n to dry the weeping clay.

* Some such Legend is quoted by De Sacy and D'Herbelot from some Commentaries on the Kurán.

SALÁMÁN fired the pile; and in the flame
That, passing him, consumed ABSÁL like straw,
Died his Divided Self, his Individual
Survived, and, like a living Soul from which
The Body falls, strange, naked, and alone.
Then rose his cry to Heaven—his eyelashes
Wept blood—his sighs stood like a smoke in Heaven,
And Morning rent her garment at his anguish.
And when Night came, that drew the pen across
The written woes of Day for all but him,
Crouch'd in a lonely corner of the house,
He seem'd to feel about him in the dark
For one who was not, and whom no fond word
Could summon from the Void in which she lay.

And so the Wise One found him where he sate
Bow'd down alone in darkness; and once more
Made the long-silent voice of Reason sound
In the deserted Palace of his Soul;
Until SALÁMÁN lifted up his head
To bow beneath the Master; sweet it seem'd,
Sweeping the chaff and litter from his own,
To be the very dust of Wisdom's door,
Slave of the Firmán of the Lord of Life,
Who pour'd the wine of Wisdom in his cup,
Who laid the dew of Peace upon his lips;
Yea, wrought by Miracle in his behalf.
For when old Love return'd to Memory,
And broke in passion from his lips, THE SAGE,
Under whose waxing WILL Existence rose
From Nothing, and, relaxing, waned again,
Raising a Fantom Image of ABSÁL,
Set it awhile before SALÁMÁN'S eyes,
Till, having sow'd the seed of comfort there,
It went again down to Annihilation.
But ever, as the Fantom past away,
THE SAGE would tell of a Celestial Love;
“ZUHRAH,”

* “ZUHRAH.” The Planetary and Celestial Venus.

SALÁMÁN listen'd, and inclined—again
Entreated, inclination ever grew;
Until THE SAGE beholding in his Soul
The SPIRIT

* “Maaní.” The Mystical pass-word of the Súfís, to express the transcendental New Birth of the Soul.

THE Crown of Empire how supreme a lot!
The Sultan's Throne how lofty! Yea, but not
For All—None but the Heaven-ward foot may dare
To mount—The head that touches Heaven to wear!—

When the Beloved of Royal augury
Was rescued from the bondage of ABSÁL,
Then he arose, and shaking off the dust
Of that lost travel, girded up his heart,
And look'd with undefiléd robe to Heaven.
Then was his Head worthy to wear the Crown,
His Foot to mount the Throne. And then THE SHÁH
From all the quarters of his World-wide realm
Summon'd all those who under Him the ring
Of Empire wore, King, Counsellor, Amír;
Of whom not one but to SALÁMÁN did
Obeisance, and lifted up his neck
To yoke it under His supremacy.
Then THE SHÁH crown'd him with the Golden Crown,
And set the Golden Throne beneath his feet,
And over all the heads of the Assembly,
And in the ears of all, his Jewel-word
With the Diamond of Wisdom cut, and said:—

“MY Son,

* One sees Jámí taking advantage of his Allegorical Sháh to read a lesson to the Living,—whose ears Advice, unlike Praise, scarce ever reached, unless obliquely and by Fable. The Warning (and doubtless with good reason) is principally aimed at the Minister.

UNDER the leaf of many a Fable lies
The Truth for those who look for it; of this
If thou wouldst look behind and find the Fruit,
(To which the Wiser hand hath found his way)
Have thy desire—No Tale of ME and THEE,
Though I and THOU be its interpreters.

* The Story is of Generals, though enacted by Particulars.

THE Incomparable Creator, when this World
He did create, created first of all
The FIRST INTELLIGENCE

* “These Ten Intelligences are only another Form of the Gnostic Daemones. The Gnostics held that Matter and Spirit could have no Intercourse—they were, as it were, incommensurate. How then, granting this premise, was Creation possible? Their answer was a kind of gradual Elimination. God, the ‘Actus Purus,’ created an Aeon; this Aeon created a Second; and so on, until the Tenth Aeon was sufficiently Material (as the Ten were in a continually descending Series) to affect Matter, and so cause the Creation by giving to Matter the Spiritual Form.

Similarly we have in Súffíism these Ten Intelligences in a corresponding Series, and for the same End.

There are Ten Intelligences, and Nine Heavenly Spheres, of which the Ninth is the Uppermost Heaven, appropriated to the First Intelligence; the Eighth, that of the Zodiac, to the Second; the Seventh, Saturn, to the Third; the Sixth, Jupiter, to the Fourth; the Fifth, Mars, to the Fifth; the Fourth, the Sun, to the Sixth; the Third, Venus, to the Seventh; the Second, Mercury, to the Eighth; the First, the Moon, to the Ninth; and THE EARTH is the peculiar Sphere of the Tenth, or lowest Intelligence, called THE ACTIVE.”—E. B. C.—v. Appendix.

HIS the PRIME SPIRIT that, spontaneously
Projected by the TENTH INTELLIGENCE,
Was from no womb of MATTER reproduced
A special Essence called THE SOUL OF MAN;
A Child of Heaven, in raiment unbeshamed
Of Sensual taint, and so SALÁMÁN named.

And who ABSÁL?—The Sense-adoring Body,
Slave to the Blood and Sense—through whom
THE SOUL,
Although the Body's very Life it be,
Doth yet imbibe the knowledge and delight
Of things of SENSE; and these in such a bond
United as GOD only can divide,
As Lovers in this Tale are signified.

And what the Flood on which they sail'd, with those
Fantastic creatures peopled; and that Isle
In which their Paradise awhile they made,
And thought, for ever?—That false Paradise
Amid the fluctuating Waters found
Of Sensual passion, in whose bosom lies
A world of Being from the light of God
Deep as in unsubsiding Deluge drown'd.

And why was it that ABSÁL in that Isle
So soon deceived in her Delight, and He
Fell short of his Desire?—that was to show
How soon the Senses of their Passion tire,
And in a surfeit of themselves expire.

And what the turning of SALÁMÁN'S Heart
Back to THE SHÁH, and to the throne of Might
And Glory yearning?—What but the return
Of the lost SOUL to his true Parentage,
And back from Carnal error looking up
Repentant to his Intellectual Right.

And when the Man between his living Shame
Distracted, and the Love that would not die,
Fled once again—what meant that second Flight
Into the Desert, and that Pile of Fire
On which he fain his Passion with Himself
Would immolate?—That was the Discipline
To which the living Man himself devotes,
Till all the Sensual dross be scorcht away,
And, to its pure integrity return'd,
His Soul alone survives. But forasmuch
As from a darling Passion so divorced
The wound will open and will bleed anew,
Therefore THE SAGE would ever and anon
Raise up and set before SALÁMÁN'S eyes
That Fantom of the past; but evermore
Revealing one Diviner, till his Soul
She fill'd, and blotted out the Mortal Love.
For what is ZUHRAH?—What but that Divine
Original, of which the Soul of Man
Darkly possesst, by that fierce Discipline
At last he disengages from the Dust,
And flinging off the baser rags of Sense,
And all in Intellectual Light arrayed,
As Conqueror and King he mounts the Throne,
And wears the Crown of Human Glory
—Whence,
Throne over Throne surmounting, he shall reign
One with the LAST and FIRST INTELLIGENCE.

This is the meaning of this Mystery,
Which to know wholly ponder in thy Heart,
Till all its ancient Secret be enlarged.
Enough—The written Summary I close,
And set my Seal—

“To thy Harím Dividuality
“No entrance finds,” &c.

(p. 48.)

THIS Súfí Identification with Deity (further illustrated in the Story of Salámán's first flight) is shadowed in a Parable of Jeláluddín, of which here is an outline. “One knocked at the Beloved's Door; and a Voice asked from within, ‘Who is there?’ and he answered, ‘It is I.’ Then the Voice said, ‘This House will not hold Me and Thee.’ And the Door was not opened. Then went the Lover into the Desert, and fasted and prayed in Solitude. And after a Year he returned, and knocked again at the Door. And again the Voice asked, ‘Who is there?’ and he said, ‘It is Thyself!’—and the Door was opened to him.”

“O Darling of the soul of Iflatún;
“To whom with all his school Aristo bows;”

(p. 56.)

Some Traveller in the East—Professor Eastwick, I think—tells us that in endeavouring to explain to an Eastern Cook the nature of an Irish Stew, the man said he knew well enough about “Aristo.” “Iflatún” might almost as well have been taken for “Vol-au-vent.”

“Like Noah's, puff'd with Insolence and Pride,” &c.

(p. 57.)

In the Kurán God engages to save Noah and his Family,—meaning all who believed in the Warning. One of Noah's Sons (Canaan or Ham, some think) would not believe. “And the Ark swam with them between waves like Mountains; and Noah called up to his Son, who was separated from him, saying, ‘Embark with us, my Son, and stay not with the Unbelievers.’ He answered, ‘I will get on a Mountain, which will secure me from the Water.’ Noah replied, ‘There is no security this Day from the Decree of God, except for him on whom he shall have Mercy.’ And a Wave passed between them, and he became one of those who were drowned. And it was said, ‘O Earth, swallow up thy waters; and Thou, O Heaven, withhold thy Rain!’ And immediately the Water abated, and the Decree was fulfilled, and the Ark rested on the Mountain Al Judi; and it was said, ‘Away with the ungodly People!’ And Noah called upon his Lord, and said, ‘O Lord, verily my Son is of my Family; and thy Promise is True: for Thou art the most just of those who exercise Judgment.’ God answered, ‘O Noah, verily he is not of thy Family: this intercession of thine for him is not a righteous work.’”—Sale's Kurán, vol. ii. p. 21.

“Finer than any Bridal-puppet, which
“To prove another's Love a Woman sends,” &c.

(p. 64.)

In Atkinson's version of the “Kitábi Kulsúm Naneh” [C. XII.] we find among other Ceremonials and Proprieties of which the Book treats, that when a Woman wished to ascertain another's Love, she sent a Doll on a Tray with flowers and sweetmeats, and judged how far her affection was reciprocated by the Doll's being returned to her drest in a Robe of Honour, or in Black. The same Book also tells of two Dolls—Bride and Bridegroom, I suppose—being used on such occasions; the test of Affection being whether the one sent were returned with or without its Fellow.

“The Royal Game of Chúgán.”

(p. 65.)

For centuries the Royal Game of Persia, and adopted (Ouseley thinks) under varying modifications of name and practice by other nations, was played by Horsemen, who, suitably habited, and armed with semicircular-headed Bats or Sticks, strove to drive a Ball through a Goal of upright Pillars. (See Frontispiece.) We may call it “Horse-hockey,” as heretofore played by young Englishmen in the Maidán of Calcutta, and other Indian cities, I believe, and now in England itself under the name of Polo.

The Frontispiece to this version of the Poem is accurately copied from an Engraving in Sir William's Book, which he says (and those who care to look into the Bodleian

* MS. Ouseley 20.

The Persian legend at the Top Corner is the Verse from Háfiz which the Drawing illustrates:

Shahsuvára khúsh bemeidán ámedy gúy bezann.

I am informed by a distinguished Arabic Scholar that the proper Cry of the Muezzin is, with some slight local variations, such as he heard it at Cairo and Damascus:

Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar;
Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar;
Ishhad lá allah illá 'llah;
Ishhad lá allah illá 'llah;
Ishhad lá allah illá 'llah;
Ishhad Muhammad rasúluhu;
Ishhad Muhammad rasúluhu;
Ishhad Muhammad rasúluhu;
Hayá 'alá 's-salát, Hayá 'alá 's-salát,
Inna 's-salát khair min an-naum.

“God is great” (four times); “Confess that there is no God but God” (three times); “Confess that Muhammad is the prophet of God” (three times); “Come to Prayer, Come to Prayer, for Prayer is better than Sleep.”

[A more accurate account will be found in Lane's Modern Egyptians.]

“Here Iram-garden seem'd in secresy
“Blowing the rosebud of its Revelation;”

“Mahomet,” says Sir W. Jones, “in the Chapter of The Morning, towards the end of his Alcoran, mentions a Garden called ‘Irem,’ which is no less celebrated by the Asiatic Poets than that of the Hesperides by the Greeks. It was planted, as the Commentators say, by a king named Shedád,”— deep in the Sands of Arabia Felix—“and was once seen by an Arabian who wandered far into the Desert in search of a lost Camel.”

A curious parallel to this doctrine is quoted by Mr. Morley (Critical Miscellanies, Series II. p. 318), from so anti-gnostic a Doctor as Paley, in Ch. III. of his Natural Theology.

“As we have said, therefore, God prescribes limits to his power, that he may let in the exercise, and thereby exhibit demonstrations, of his wisdom. For then—i.e., such laws and limitations being laid down, it is as though some Being should have fixed certain rules; and, if we may so speak, provided certain materials; and, afterwards, have committed to some other Being, out of these materials, and in subordination to these rules, the task of drawing forth a Creation; a supposition which evidently leaves room, and induces indeed a necessity, for contrivance. Nay, there may be many such Agents, and many ranks of these. We do not advance this as a doctrine either of philosophy or religion; but we say that the subject may be safely represented under this view; because the Deity, acting himself by general laws, will have the same consequence upon our reasoning, as if he had prescribed these laws to another.”

ONCE on a time from all the Circles seven
Between the stedfast Earth and rolling Heaven
THE BIRDS, of all Note, Plumage, and Degree,
That float in Air, and roost upon the Tree;
And they that from the Waters snatch their Meat,
And they that scour the Desert with long Feet:
Birds of all Natures, known or not to Man,
Flock'd from all Quarters into full Divan,
On no less solemn business than to find
Or choose, a Sultan Khalif of their kind,
For whom, if never their's, or lost, they pined.
The Snake had his, 't was said; and so the Beast
His Lion-lord: and Man had his, at least:
And that the Birds, who nearest were the Skies,
And went apparell'd in its Angel Dyes,
Should be without—under no better Law
Than that which lost all other in the Maw—
Disperst without a Bond of Union—nay,
Or meeting to make each the other's Prey—
This was the Grievance—this the solemn Thing
On which the scatter'd Commonwealth of Wing,
From all the four Winds, flying like to Cloud
That met and blacken'd Heav'n, and Thunder-loud
With Sound of whirring Wings and Beaks that clash'd
Down like a Torrent on the Desert dash'd:
Till by Degrees, the Hubbub and Pell-mell
Into some Order and Precedence fell,
And, Proclamation made of Silence, each
In special Accent, but in general Speech
That all should understand, as seem'd him best,
The Congregation of all Wings addrest.

And first, with Heart so full as from his Eyes
Ran weeping, up rose Tajidar

* Tájidár—“Crown-wearer”—one Epithet of the “Hudhud,” a beautiful kind of Lapwing, Niebuhr says, frequenting the Shores of the Persian Gulf, and supposed to have the Gift of Speech &c.

One Night from out the swarming City Gate
Stept holy Bajazyd, to meditate
Alone amid the breathing Fields that lay
In solitary Silence leagues away,
Beneath a Moon and Stars as bright as Day.
And the Saint wondering such a Temple were,
And so lit up, and scarce one worshipper,
A voice from Heav'n amid the stillness said;
“The Royal Road is not for all to tread,
Nor is the Royal Palace for the Rout,
Who, even if they reach it, are shut out.
The Blaze that from my Harím window breaks
With fright the Rabble of the Roadside takes;
And ev'n of those that at my Portal din,
Thousands may knock for one that enters in.”

Thus spoke the Tajidar: and the wing'd Crowd,
That underneath his Word in Silence bow'd,
Clapp'd Acclamation: and their Hearts and Eyes
Were kindled by the Firebrand of the Wise.
They felt their Degradation: they believed
The word that told them how to be retrieved,
And in that glorious Consummation won
Forgot the Cost at which it must be done.
“They only long'd to follow: they would go
Whither he led, through Flood, or Fire, or Snow”—
So cried the Multitude. But some there were
Who listen'd with a cold disdainful air,
Content with what they were, or grudging Cost
Of Time or Travel that might all be lost;
These, one by one, came forward, and preferr'd
Unwise Objection: which the wiser Word
Shot with direct Reproof, or subtly round
With Argument and Allegory wound.

The Pheasant first would know by what pretence
The Tajidar to that pre-eminence
Was raised—a Bird, but for his lofty Crest
(And such the Pheasant had) like all the Rest—

Who answer'd—“By no Virtue of my own
Sulayman chose me, but by His alone:
Not by the Gold and Silver of my Sighs
Made mine, but the free Largess of his Eyes.
Behold the Grace of Allah comes and goes
As to Itself is good: and no one knows
Which way it turns: in that mysterious Court
Not he most finds who furthest travels for't.
For one may crawl upon his knees Life-long,
And yet may never reach, or all go wrong:
Another just arriving at the Place
He toil'd for, and—the Door shut in his Face:
Whereas Another, scarcely gone a Stride,
And suddenly—Behold he is Inside!—
But though the Runner win not, he that stands,
No Thorn will turn to Roses in his Hands:
Each one must do his best and all endure,
And all endeavour, hoping but not sure.
Heav'n its own Umpire is; its Bidding do,
And Thou perchance shalt be Sulayman's too.”

One day Shah Mahmúd, riding with the Wind
A-hunting, left his Retinue behind,
And coming to a River, whose swift Course
Doubled back Game and Dog, and Man and Horse,
Beheld upon the Shore a little Lad
A-fishing, very poor, and Tatter-clad
He was, and weeping as his Heart would break.
So the Great Sultan, for good humour's sake
Pull'd in his Horse a moment, and drew nigh,
And after making his Salám, ask'd why
He wept—weeping, the Sultan said, so sore
As he had never seen one weep before.
The Boy look'd up, and “Oh Amír,” he said,
“Sev'n of us are at home, and Father dead,
And Mother left with scarce a Bit of Bread:
And now since Sunrise have I fish'd—and see!
Caught nothing for our Supper—Woe is Me!”
The Sultan lighted from his Horse. “Behold,”
Said he, “Good Fortune will not be controll'd:
And, since To-day yours seems to turn from you,
Suppose we try for once what mine will do,
And we will share alike in all I win.”
So the Shah took, and flung his Fortune in,
The Net which, cast by the Great Mahmúd's Hand,
A hundred glittering Fishes brought to Land.
The Lad look'd up in Wonder—Mahmúd smiled
And vaulted into Saddle. But the Child
Ran after—“Nay, Amír, but half the Haul
Is yours by Bargain”—“Nay, To-day take all,”
The Sultan cried, and shook his Bridle free—
“But mind—To-morrow All belongs to Me—”
And so rode off. Next morning at Divan
The Sultan's Mind upon his Bargain ran,
And being somewhat in a mind for sport
Sent for the Lad: who, carried up to Court,
And marching into Royalty's full Blaze
With such a Catch of Fish as yesterday's,
The Sultan call'd and set him by his side,
And asking him, “What Luck?” The Boy replied,
“This is the Luck that follows every Cast,
Since o'er my Net the Sultan's Shadow pass'd.”

Then came The Nightingale, from such a Draught
Of Ecstasy that from the Rose he quaff'd
Reeling as drunk, and ever did distil
In exquisite Divisions from his Bill
To inflame the Hearts of Men—and thus sang He—
“To me alone, alone, is giv'n the Key
Of Love; of whose whole Mystery possesst,
When I reveal a little to the Rest,
Forthwith Crcation listening forsakes
The Reins of Reason, and my Frenzy takes:
Yea, whosoever once has quaff'd this wine
He leaves unlisten'd David's Song for mine.
In vain do Men for my Divisions strive,
And die themselves making dead Lutes alive:
I hang the Stars with Meshes for Men's Souls:
The Garden underneath my Music rolls.
The long, long Morns that mourn the Rose away
I sit in silence, and on Anguish prey:
But the first Air which the New Year shall breathe
Up to my Boughs of Message from beneath
That in her green Harím my Bride unveils,
My Throat bursts silence and her Advent hails,
Who in her crimson Volume registers
The Notes of Him whose Life is lost in hers.

* It was sometimes fancied that the Rose had as many Petals as her Lover had Notes in his Voice.

So with Division infinite and Trill
On would the Nightingale have warbled still,
And all the World have listen'd; but a Note
Of sterner Import check'd the love-sick Throat.

“Oh watering with thy melodious Tears
Love's Garden, and who dost indeed the Ears
Of men with thy melodious Fingers mould
As David's Finger Iron did of old:

* The Prophet David was supposed, in Oriental Legend, to have had the power to mould Iron into a Cuirass with the miraculous Power of his Finger.

Like that fond Dervish waiting in the throng
When some World-famous Beauty went along,
Who smiling on the Antic as she pass'd—
Forthwith Staff, Bead and Scrip away he cast,
And grovelling in the Kennel, took to whine
Before her Door among the Dogs and Swine.
Which when she often went unheeding by,
But one day quite as heedless ask'd him—
“Why?”—
He told of that one Smile, which, all the Rest
Passing, had kindled Hope within his Breast—
Again she smiled and said, “Oh self-beguiled
Poor Wretch, at whom and not on whom I smiled.”

Then came the subtle Parrot in a coat
Greener than Greensward, and about his Throat
A Collar ran of sub-sulphureous Gold;
And in his Beak a Sugar-plum he troll'd,
That all his Words with luscious Lisping ran,
And to this Tune—“Oh cruel Cage, and Man
More iron still who did confine me there,
Who else with him

* Khizar, Prophet and Keeper of the Well of Life; habited always in the Green which the Angels were supposed to wear; and, whether from that reason, or some peculiar Phenomenon in the Air, constantly called Sky-colour by the Persian Poets.

To whom the Tajidar—“Oh thou whose Best
In the green leaf of Paradise is drest,
But whose Neck kindles with a lower Fire—
Oh slip the collar off of base Desire,
And stand apparell'd in Heav'n's Woof entire!

* The Sky is constantly called Green in Persian Poetry: whether because of the Tree of Heaven Sidra: or of some fabled Emerald in Káf on which the World hinges: or because Green has been chosen (for whatever Reason) for the Colour of Life and Honour. The green tinge of some Oriental Skies is indeed noticed by Travellers: as we see a little also in our Northern Sunrise and Sunset: but still it must be an exceptional Phenomenon. Blue, or Purple, is rather devoted to Death and Mourning in the East. As, in this very Poem, one of the Stories is of the Sea being askt “why he dresses his Waves in Blue?”—And he answers he does so for the Loss of One who never will return.

For what said He, that dying Hermit, whom
Your Prophet came to, trailing through the Gloom
His Emerald Vest, and tempted—“Come with Me,
And Live.” The Hermit answered—“Not with Thee.
Two Worlds there are, and This was thy Design,
And thou hast got it; but The Next is mine;
Whose Fount is this life's Death, and to whose Side
Ev'n now I find my Way without a Guide.”

Then like a Sultan glittering in all Rays
Of Jewelry, and deckt with his own Blaze,
The glorious Peacock swept into the Ring:
And, turning slowly that the glorious Thing
Might fill all Eyes with wonder, thus said He.
“Behold, the Secret Artist, making me,
With no one Colour of the skies bedeckt,
But from its Angel's Feathers did select
To make up mine withal, the Gabriel
Of all the Birds: though from my Place I fell
In Eden, when Acquaintance I did make
In those blest Days with that Sev'n-headed Snake,

* And, as the Tradition went, let the Snake into Eden.

“Were it,” 'twas answer'd, “only to return
To that lost Eden, better far to burn
In Self-abasement up thy pluméd Pride,
And ev'n with lamer feet to creep inside—
But all mistaken you and all like you
That long for that lost Eden as the true;
Fair as it was, still nothing but the Shade
And Out-court of the Majesty that made.
That which I point you tow'rd, and which the King
I tell you of broods over with his Wing,
With no deciduous leaf, but with the Rose
Of Spiritual Beauty, smells and glows:
No plot of Earthly Pleasance, but the whole
True Garden of the Universal Soul.”

For so Creation's Master-Jewel fell
From that same Eden: loving which too well,
The Work before the Artist did prefer,
And in the Garden lost the Gardener.
Wherefore one Day about the Garden went
A voice that found him in his false Content,
And like a bitter Sarsar of the North

* Sarsar—a cold Blast.

Then from a Ruin where conceal'd he lay
Watching his buried Gold, and hating Day,
Hooted The Owl.—“I tell you, my Delight
Is in the Ruin and the Dead of Night
Where I was born, and where I love to wone
All my Life long, sitting on some cold stone
Away from all your roystering Companies,
In some dark Corner where a Treasure lies;
That, buried by some Miser in the Dark,
Speaks up to me at Midnight like a Spark;
And o'er it like a Talisman I brood,
Companion of the Serpent and the Toad.
What need of other Sovereign, having found,
And keeping as in Prison underground,
One before whom all other Kings bow down,
And with his glittering Heel their Foreheads crown?”

“He that a Miser lives and Miser dies,
At the Last Day what Figure shall he rise?”

A Fellow all his life lived hoarding Gold,
And, dying, hoarded left it. And behold,
One Night his Son saw peering through the House
A Man, with yet the semblance of a Mouse,
Watching a crevice in the Wall—and cried—
“My Father?”—“Yes,” the Musulman replied,
“Thy Father!”—“But why watching thus?”
—“For fear
Lest any smell my Treasure buried here.”
“But wherefore, Sir, so metamousified?”
“Because, my Son, such is the true outside
Of the inner Soul by which I lived and died.”

“Aye,” said The Partridge, with his Foot and Bill
Crimson with raking Rubies from the Hill,
And clattering his Spurs—“Wherewith the Ground
“I stab,” said he, “for Rubies, that, when found
I swallow; which, as soon as swallow'd, turn
To Sparks which through my beak and eyes do burn.
Gold, as you say, is but dull Metal dead,
And hanging on the Hoarder's Soul like Lead:
But Rubies that have Blood within, and grown
And nourisht in the Mountain Heart of Stone,
Burn with an inward Light, which they inspire,
And make their Owners Lords of their Desire.”

* Every Jewel had its special Charm, and so was worn in Ring or Amulet.

Never was Jewel after or before
Like that Sulayman for a Signet wore:
Whereby one Ruby, weighing scarce a grain
Did Sea and Land and all therein constrain,
Yea, ev'n the Winds of Heav'n—made the fierce East
Bear his League-wide Pavilion like a Beast,
Whither he would: yea, the Good Angel held
His subject, and the lower Fiend compell'd.
Till, looking round about him in his pride,
He overtax'd the Fountain that supplied,
Praying that after him no Son of Clay
Should ever touch his Glory. And one Day
Almighty God his Jewel stole away,
And gave it to the Div, who with the Ring
Wore also the Resemblance of the King,
And so for forty days play'd such a Game
As blots Sulayman's forty years with Shame.

Then The Shah-Falcon, tossing up his Head
Blink-hooded as it was—“Behold,” he said,
“I am the chosen Comrade of the King,
And perch upon the Fist that wears the Ring;
Born, bred, and nourisht, in the Royal Court,
I take the Royal Name and make the Sport.
And if strict Discipline I undergo
And half my Life am blinded—be it so;
Because the Shah's Companion ill may brook
On aught save Royal Company to look.
And why am I to leave my King, and fare
With all these Rabble Wings I know not where?”—
“Oh blind indeed”—the Answer was, “and dark
To any but a vulgar Mortal Mark,
And drunk with Pride of Vassalage to those
Whose Humour like their Kingdom comes and goes;
All Mutability: who one Day please
To give: and next Day what they gave not seize:
Like to the Fire: a dangerous Friend at best,
Which who keeps farthest from does wiseliest.”

A certain Shah there was in Days foregone
Who had a lovely Slave he doated on,
And cherish'd as the Apple of his Eye,
Clad gloriously, fed sumptuously, set high,
And never was at Ease were He not by,
Who yet, for all this Sunshine, Day by Day
Was seen to wither like a Flower away.
Which, when observing, one without the Veil
Of Favour ask'd the Favourite—“Why so pale
And sad?” thus sadly answer'd the poor Thing—
“No Sun that rises sets until the King,
Whose Archery is famous among Men,
Aims at an Apple on my Head;

* Tell's Apple, long before his Time: and, by whomsoever invented, a Fancy which (as was likely) would take lasting hold of the Oriental Mind. In Chodzko's Popular Persian Songs (Oriental Translation Fund, 1842) is a sort of Funeral Chaunt on Zulfakhar Khan by one of his Slaves; and the following Passage in it: “Your Gun from the Manufactory of Loristan shines like a Cloud gilded by the Rays of the Sun. Oh Serdar! your Place is now empty: you were my Master: Your Gun from the Manufactory of Cabúl shined in your Hands like a Bunch of Roses. Your Ball never missed a Flower put in the middle of my Front Hair.”

Then on a sudden swoop'd The Phœnix down
As though he wore as well as gave the Crown:

* He was supposed to be destined to Sovereignty over whom the Shadow of the wings of the Phœnix passed.

A certain Sultan dying, his Vizier
In Dream beheld him, and in mortal Fear
Began—“Oh mighty Shah of Shahs! Thrice-blest”—
But loud the Vision shriek'd and struck its Breast,
And “Stab me not with empty Title!” cried—
“One only Shah there is, and none beside,
Who from his Throne above for certain Ends
Awhile some Spangle of his Glory lends
To Men on Earth; but calling in again
Exacts a strict account of every Grain.
Sultan I lived, and held the World in scorn:
Oh better had I glean'd the Field of Corn!
Oh better had I been a Beggar born,
And for my Throne and Crown, down in the Dust
My living Head had laid where Dead I must!
Oh wither'd, wither'd, wither'd, be the Wing
Whose overcasting Shadow made me King!”

Then from a Pond, where all day long he kept,
Waddled the dapper Duck demure, adept
At infinite Ablution, and precise
In keeping of his Raiment clean and nice.
And “Sure of all the Race of Birds,” said He,
“None for Religious Purity like Me,
Beyond what strictest Rituals prescribe—
Methinks I am the Saint of all our Tribe,
To whom, by Miracle, the Water, that
I wash in, also makes my Praying-Mat.”

To whom, more angrily than all, replied
The Leader, lashing that religious Pride,
That under ritual Obedience
To outer Law with inner might dispense:
For, fair as all the Feather to be seen,
Could one see through, the Maw was not so clean:
But He that made both Maw and Feather too
Would take account of, seeing through and through.

A Shah returning to his Capital,
His subjects drest it forth in Festival,
Thronging with Acclamation Square and Street,
And kneeling flung before his Horse's feet
Jewel and Gold. All which with scarce an Eye
The Sultan superciliously rode by:
Till coming to the public Prison, They
Who dwelt within those grisly Walls, by way
Of Welcome, having neither Pearl nor Gold,
Over the wall chopt Head and Carcase roll'd,
Some almost parcht to Mummy with the Sun,
Some wet with Execution that day done.
At which grim Compliment at last the Shah
Drew Bridle: and amid a wild Hurrah
Of savage Recognition, smiling threw
Silver and Gold among the wretched Crew,
And so rode forward. Whereat of his Train
One wondering that, while others sued in vain
With costly gifts, which carelessly he pass'd,
But smiled at ghastly Welcome like the last:
The Shah made answer—“All that Pearl and Gold
Of ostentatious Welcome only told:
A little with great Clamour from the Store
Of Hypocrites who kept at home much more.
But when those sever'd Heads and Trunks I saw—
Save by strict Execution of my Law
They had not parted company; not one
But told my Will not talk'd about, but done.”

Then from a Wood was heard unseen to coo
The Ring-dove—“Yúsuf! Yúsuf! Yúsuf! Yú-”
(For thus her sorrow broke her Note in twain,
And, just where broken, took it up again)
“-suf! Yúsuf! Yúsuf! Yúsuf!”—But one Note,
Which still repeating, she made hoarse her throat:

Till checkt—“Oh You, who with your idle Sighs
Block up the Road of better Enterprize;
Sham Sorrow all, or bad as sham if true,
When once the better thing is come to do;
Beware lest wailing thus you meet his Doom
Who all too long his Darling wept, from whom
You draw the very Name you hold so dear,
And which the World is somewhat tired to hear.”

When Yúsuf from his Father's Home was torn,
The Patriarch's Heart was utterly forlorn,
And, like a Pipe with but one stop, his Tongue
With nothing but the name of “Yúsuf” rung.
Then down from Heaven's Branches flew the Bird

* Gabriel.

And after these came others—arguing,
Enquiring and excusing—some one Thing,
And some another—endless to repeat,
But, in the Main, Sloth, Folly, or Deceit.
Their Souls were to the vulgar Figure cast
Of earthly Victual not of Heavenly Fast.
At last one smaller Bird, of a rare kind,
Of modest Plume and unpresumptuous Mind,
Whisper'd, “Oh Tajidar, we know indeed
How Thou both knowest, and would'st help our Need;
For thou art wise and holy, and hast been
Behind the Veil, and there The Presence seen.
But we are weak and vain, with little care
Beyond our yearly Nests and daily Fare—
How should we reach the Mountain? and if there
How get so great a Prince to hear our Prayer?
For there, you say, dwells The Symurgh alone
In Glory, like Sulayman on his Throne,
And we but Pismires at his feet: can He
Such puny Creatures stoop to hear, or see;
Or hearing, seeing, own us—unakin
As He to Folly, Woe, and Death, and Sin?”—

To whom the Tajidar, whose Voice for those
Bewilder'd ones to full Compassion rose—
“Oh lost so long in Exile, you disclaim
The very Fount of Being whence you came,
Cannot be parted from, and, will or no,
Whether for Good or Evil must re-flow!
For look—the Shadows into which the Light
Of his pure Essence down by infinite
Gradation dwindles, which at random play
Through Space in Shape indefinite—one Ray
Of his Creative Will into defined
Creation quickens: We that swim the Wind,
And they the Flood below, and Man and Beast
That walk between, from Lion to the least
Pismire that creeps along Sulayman's Wall—
Yea, that in which they swim, fly, walk, and crawl—
However near the Fountain Light, or far
Removed, yet His authentic Shadows are;
Dead Matter's Self but the dark Residue
Exterminating Glory dwindles to.
A Mystery too fearful in the Crowd
To utter—scarcely to Thyself aloud—
But when in solitary Watch and Prayer
Consider'd: and religiously beware
Lest Thou the Copy with the Type confound;
And Deity, with Deity indrown'd,—
For as pure Water into purer Wine
Incorporating shall itself refine
While the dull Drug lies half-resolved below,
With Him and with his Shadows is it so:
The baser Forms, to whatsoever Change
Subject, still vary through their lower Range:
To which the higher even shall decay,
That, letting ooze their better Part away
For Things of Sense and Matter, in the End
Shall merge into the Clay to which they tend.
Unlike to him, who straining through the Bond
Of outward Being for a Life beyond,
While the gross Wordling to his Centre clings,
That draws him deeper in, exulting springs
To merge him in the central Soul of Things.
And shall not he pass home with other Zest
Who, with full Knowledge, yearns for such a Rest
Than he, who with his better self at strife,
Drags on the weary Exile call'd This Life?—
One, like a child with outstretcht Arms and Face
Upturn'd, anticipates his Sire's Embrace;
The other crouching like a guilty Slave
Till flogg'd to Punishment across the Grave.
And, knowing that His glory ill can bear
The unpurged Eye; do thou Thy Breast prepare;
And the mysterious Mirror He set there,
To temper his reflected Image in,
Clear of Distortion, Doubleness, and Sin:
And in thy Conscience understanding this,
The Double only seems, but The One is,
Thy-self to Self-annihilation give
That this false Two in that true One may live.
For this I say: if, looking in thy Heart,
Thou for Self-whole mistake thy Shadow-part,
That Shadow-part indeed into The Sun
Shall melt, but senseless of its Union:
But in that Mirror if with purgéd eyes
Thy Shadow Thou for Shadow recognize,
Then shalt Thou back into thy Centre fall
A conscious Ray of that eternal All.”

He ceased, and for awhile Amazement quell'd
The Host, and in the Chain of Silence held:
A Mystery so awful who would dare—
So glorious who would not wish—to share?
So Silence brooded on the feather'd Folk,
Till here and there a timid Murmur broke
From some too poor in honest Confidence,
And then from others of too much Pretence;
Whom both, as each unduly hoped or fear'd
The Tajidar in answer check'd or cheer'd.

Some said their Hearts were good indeed to go
The Way he pointed out: but they were slow
Of Comprehension, and scarce understood
Their present Evil or the promised Good:
And so, tho' willing to do all they could,
Must not they fall short, or go wholly wrong,
On such mysterious Errand, and so long?
Whom the wise Leader bid but Do their Best
In Hope and Faith, and leave to Him the rest,
For He who fix'd the Race, and knew its Length
And Danger, also knew the Runner's Strength.

Shah Mahmúd, absent on an Enterprize,
Ayas, the very Darling of his eyes,
At home under an Evil Eye fell sick,
Then cried the Sultan to a soldier “Quick!
To Horse! to Horse! without a Moment's Stay,—
The shortest Road with all the Speed you may,—
Or, by the Lord, your Head shall pay for it!”—
Off went the Soldier, plying Spur and Bit—
Over the sandy Desert, over green
Valley, and Mountain, and the Stream between,
Without a Moment's Stop for rest or bait,—
Up to the City—to the Palace Gate—
Up to the Presence-Chamber at a Stride—
And Lo! The Sultan at his Darling's side!—
Then thought the Soldier—“I have done my Best,
And yet shall die for it.” The Sultan guess'd
His Thought and smiled. “Indeed your Best you did,
The nearest Road you knew, and well you rid:
And if I knew a shorter, my Excess
Of Knowledge does but justify thy Less.”

And then, with drooping Crest and Feather, came
Others, bow'd down with Penitence and Shame.
They long'd indeed to go; “but how begin,
Mesh'd and entangled as they were in Sin
Which often-times Repentance of past Wrong
As often broken had but knit more strong?”

Whom the wise Leader bid be of good cheer,
And, conscious of the Fault, dismiss the Fear
Nor at the very Entrance of the Fray
Their Weapon, ev'n if broken, fling away:
Since Mercy on the broken Branch anew
Would blossom were but each Repentance true.

For did not God his Prophet take to Task?
“Sev'n-times of Thee did Kárún Pardon ask;
Which, hadst thou been like Me his Maker— yea,
But present at the Kneading of his Clay
With those twain Elements of Hell and Heav'n,—
One prayer had won what Thou deny'st to Sev'n.”

For like a Child sent with a fluttering Light
To feel his way along a gusty Night
Man walks the World: again and yet again
The Lamp shall be by Fits of Passion slain:
But shall not He who sent him from the Door
Relight the Lamp once more, and yet once more?

When the rebellious Host from Death shall wake
Black with Despair of Judgment, God shall take
Ages of holy Merit from the Count
Of Angels to make up Man's short Amount,
And bid the murmuring Angel gladly spare
Of that which, undiminishing his Share
Of Bliss, shall rescue Thousands from the Cost
Of Bankruptcy within the Prison lost.

* This paragraph may be omitted, and the two preceding ones reversed.

Another Story told how in the Scale
Good Will beyond mere Knowledge would prevail.

In Paradise the Angel Gabriel heard
The Lips of Allah trembling with the Word
Of perfect Acceptation: and he thought
“Some perfect Faith such perfect Answer wrought,
But whose?”—And therewith slipping from the Crypt
Of Sidra,

† Sidra, the Tree of Paradise, or Heaven.

And then came others whom the summons found
Not wholly sick indeed, but far from sound:
Whose light inconstant Soul alternate flew
From Saint to Sinner, and to both untrue;
Who like a niggard Tailor, tried to match
Truth's single Garment with a worldly Patch.
A dangerous Game; for, striving to adjust
The hesitating Scale of either Lust,
That which had least within it upward flew,
And still the weightier to the Earth down drew,
And, while suspended between Rise and Fall,
Apt with a shaking Hand to forfeit all.

There was a Queen of Egypt like the Bride
Of Night, Full-moon-faced and Canopus-eyed,
Whom one among the meanest of her Crowd
Loved—and she knew it, (for he loved aloud)
And sent for him, and said “Thou lov'st thy Queen:
Now therefore Thou hast this to choose between:
Fly for thy Life: or for this one night Wed
Thy Queen, and with the Sunrise lose thy Head.”
He paused—he turn'd to fly—she struck him dead.
“For had he truly loved his Queen,” said She,
“He would at once have giv'n his Life for me,
And Life and Wife had carried: but he lied;
And loving only Life, has justly died.”

And then came one who having clear'd his Throat
With sanctimonious Sweetness in his Note
Thus lisp'd—“Behold I languish from the first
With passionate and unrequited Thirst
Of Love for more than any mortal Bird.
Therefore have I withdrawn me from the Herd
To pine in Solitude. But Thou at last
Hast drawn a line across the dreary Past,
And sure I am by Fore-taste that the Wine
I long'd for, and Thou tell'st of, shall be mine.”

But he was sternly checkt. “I tell thee this:
Such Boast is no Assurance of such Bliss:
Thou canst not even fill the sail of Prayer
Unless from Him breathe that authentic Air
That shall lift up the Curtain that divides
His Lover from the Harím where He hides—
And the Fulfilment of thy Vows must be,
Not from thy Love for Him, but His for Thee.”

The third night after Bajazyd had died,
One saw him, in a dream, at his Bed-side,
And said, “Thou Bajazyd? Tell me Oh Pýr,
How fared it there with Munkar and Nakýr

* The two Angels who examine the Soul on its leaving the Body.

“But,” said Another, “then shall none the Seal
Of Acceptation on his Forehead feel
Ere the Grave yield them on the other Side
Where all is settled?”

But the Chief replied—

“Enough for us to know that who is meet
Shall enter, and with unreprovéd Feet,
(Ev'n as he might upon the Waters walk)
The Presence-room, and in the Presence talk
With such unbridled License as shall seem
To the Uninitiated to blaspheme.”

Just as another Holy Spirit fled,
The Skies above him burst into a Bed
Of Angels looking down and singing clear
“Nightingale! Nightingale! thy Rose is here!”
And yet, the Door wide open to that Bliss,
As some hot Lover slights a scanty Kiss,
The Saint cried “All I sigh'd for come to this?
I who life-long have struggled, Lord, to be
Not of thy Angels one, but one with Thee!”

Others were sure that all he said was true:
They were extremely wicked, that they knew:
And much they long'd to go at once—but some,
They said, so unexpectedly had come
Leaving their Nests half-built—in bad Repair—
With Children in—Themselves about to pair—
“Might he not choose a better Season—nay,
Better perhaps a Year or Two's Delay,
Till all was settled, and themselves more stout
And strong to carry their Repentance out—
And then”—

“And then, the same or like Excuse,

With harden'd Heart and Resolution loose
With dallying: and old Age itself engaged
Still to shirk that which shirking we have aged;
And so with Self-delusion, till, too late,
Death upon all Repentance shuts the Gate;
Or some fierce blow compels the Way to choose,
And forced Repentance half its Virtue lose.”

As of an aged Indian King they tell
Who, when his Empire with his Army fell
Under young Mahmúd's Sword of Wrath, was sent
At sunset to the Conqueror in his Tent;
But, ere the old King's silver head could reach
The Ground, was lifted up—with kindly Speech,
And with so holy Mercy re-assured,
That, after due Persuasion, he abjured
His Idols, sate upon Mahmúd's Divan,
And took the Name and Faith of Musulman.
But when the Night fell, in his Tent alone
The poor old King was heard to weep and groan
And smite his Bosom; which, when Mahmúd knew,
He went to him and said “Lo, if Thou rue
Thy lost Dominion, Thou shalt wear the Ring
Of thrice as large a Realm.” But the dark King
Still wept, and Ashes on his Forehead threw
And cried “Not for my Kingdom lost I rue;
But thinking how at the Last Day, will stand
The Prophet with The Volume in his Hand,
And ask of me ‘How was't that, in thy Day
Of Glory, Thou didst turn from Me and slay
My People; but soon as thy Infidel
Before my True Believers' Army fell
Like Corn before the Reaper—thou didst own
His Sword who scoutedst Me.’ Of seed so sown
What profitable Harvest should be grown?”

Then after cheering others who delay'd,
Not of the Road but of Themselves afraid,
The Tajidar the Troop of those address'd,
Whose uncomplying Attitude confess'd
Their Souls entangled in the old Deceit,
And hankering still after forbidden Meat—

“Oh ye who so long feeding on the Husk
Forgo the Fruit, and doating on the Dusk
Of the false Dawn, are blinded to the True:
That in the Maidán of this World pursue
The Golden Ball which, driven to the Goal,
Wins the World's Game but loses your own Soul:
Or like to Children after Bubbles run
That still elude your Fingers; or, if won,
Burst in Derision at your Touch; all thin
Glitter without, and empty Wind within.
So as a prosperous Worldling on the Bed
Of Death—‘Behold, I am as one,’ he said,
‘Who all my Life long have been measuring Wind,
And, dying, now leave even that behind’—
This World's Nest in which the Cockatrice
Is warm'd and hatcht of Vanity and Vice:
A false Bazár whose Wares are all a lie,
Or never worth the Price at which you buy:
A many-headed Monster that, supplied
The faster, faster is unsatisfied;
So as one, hearing a rich Fool one day
To God for yet one other Blessing pray,
Bid him no longer bounteous Heaven tire
For Life to feed, but Death to quench, the Fire.
And what are all the Vanities and Wiles
In which the false World decks herself and smiles
To draw Men down into her harlot Lap?
Lusts of the Flesh that Soul and Body sap,
And, melting Soul down into carnal Lust,
Ev'n that for which 'tis sacrificed disgust:
Or Lust of worldly Glory—hollow more
Than the Drum beaten at the Sultan's Door,
And fluctuating with the Breath of Man
As the Vain Banner flapping in the Van.
And Lust of Gold—perhaps of Lusts the worst;
The mis-created Idol most accurst
That between Man and Him who made him stands:
The Felon that with suicidal hands
He sweats to dig and rescue from his Grave,
And sets at large to make Himself its Slave.

“For lo, to what worse than oblivion gone
Are some the cozening World most doated on.
Pharaoh tried Glory: and his Chariots drown'd:
Kárún with all his Gold went underground:
Down toppled Nembroth

* Nimrod.

“And as the World upon her victims feeds
So She herself goes down the Way she leads.
For all her false allurements are the Threads
The Spider from her Entrail spins, and spreads
For Home and hunting-ground: And by and bye
Darts at due Signal on the tangled Fly,
Seizes, dis-wings, and drains the Life, and leaves
The swinging Carcase, and forthwith re-weaves
Her Web: each Victim adding to the store
Of poison'd Entrail to entangle more.
And so She bloats in Glory: till one Day
The Master of the House, passing that way,
Perceives, and with one flourish of his Broom
Of Web and Fly and Spider clears the Room.

“Behold, dropt through the Gate of Mortal Birth,
The Knightly Soul alights from Heav'n on Earth;
Begins his Race, but scarce the Saddle feels,
When a foul Imp up from the distance steals,
And, double as he will, about his Heels
Closer and ever closer circling creeps,
Then, half-invited, on the Saddle leaps,
Clings round the Rider, and, once there, in vain
The strongest strives to thrust him off again.
In Childhood just peeps up the Blade of Ill,
That Youth to Lust rears, Fury, and Self-will:
And, as Man cools to sensual Desire,
Ambition catches with as fierce a Fire;
Until Old Age sends him with one last Lust
Of Gold, to keep it where he found—in Dust.
Life at both Ends so feeble and constrain'd
How should that Imp of Sin be slain or chain'd?

“And woe to him who feeds the hateful Beast
That of his Feeder makes an after-feast!
We know the Wolf: by Stratagem and Force
Can hunt the Tiger down: but what Resource
Against the Plague we heedless hatch within,
Then, growing, pamper into full-blown Sin
With the Soul's self: ev'n, as the wise man said,
Feeding the very Devil with God's own Bread;
Until the Lord his Largess misapplied
Resent, and drive us wholly from his Side?

“For should the Grey-hound whom a Sultan fed,
And by a jewell'd String a-hunting led,
Turn by the Way to gnaw some nasty Thing
And snarl at Him who twitch'd the silken String,
Would not his Lord soon weary of Dispute,
And turn adrift the incorrigible Brute?

“Nay, would one follow, and without a Chain,
The only Master truly worth the Pain,
One must beware lest, growing over-fond
Of even Life's more consecrated Bond,
We clog our Footsteps to the World beyond.
Like that old Arab Chieftain, who confess'd
His soul by two too Darling Things possess'd—
That only Son of his: and that one Colt
Descended from the Prophet's Thunderbolt.

* The famous Borak.

“And if so vain the glittering Fish we get,
How doubly vain to doat upon the Net,
Call'd Life, that draws them, patching up this thin
Tissue of Breathing out and Breathing in,
And so by husbanding each wretched Thread
Spin out Death's very Terror that we dread—
For as the Rain-drop from the sphere of God
Dropt for a while into the Mortal Clod
So little makes of its allotted Time
Back to its Heav'n itself to re-sublime,
That it but serves to saturate its Clay
With Bitterness that will not pass away.”

One day the Prophet on a River Bank,
Dipping his Lips into the Channel, drank
A Draught as sweet as Honey. Then there came
One who an earthen Pitcher from the same
Drew up, and drank: and after some short stay
Under the Shadow, rose and went his Way,
Leaving his earthen Bowl. In which, anew
Thirsting, the Prophet from the River drew,
And drank from: but the Water that came up
Sweet from the Stream, drank bitter from the Cup.
At which the Prophet in a still Surprise
For Answer turning up to Heav'n his Eyes,
The Vessel's Earthen Lips with Answer ran—
“The Clay that I am made of once was Man,
Who dying, and resolved into the same
Obliterated Earth from which he came
Was for the Potter dug, and chased in turn
Through long Vicissitude of Bowl and Urn:
But howsoever moulded, still the Pain
Of that first mortal Anguish would retain,
And cast, and re-cast, for a Thousand years
Would turn the sweetest Water into Tears.”

And after Death?—that, shirk it as we may,
Will come, and with it bring its After-Day—

For ev'n as Yúsuf, (when his Brotherhood
Came up from Egypt to buy Corn, and stood
Before their Brother in his lofty Place,
Nor knew him, for a Veil before his Face,)
Struck on his Mystic Cup, which straightway then
Rung out their Story to those guilty Ten:—
Not to them only, but to every one;
Whatever he have said and thought and done,
Unburied with the Body shall fly up,
And gather into Heav'n's inverted Cup,
Which, stricken by God's Finger, shall tell all
The Story whereby we must stand or fall.
And though we walk this World as if behind
There were no Judgment, or the Judge half-blind,
Beware, for He with whom we have to do
Outsees the Lynx, outlives the Phœnix too—

So Sultan Mahmúd, coming Face to Face
With mightier numbers of the swarthy Race,
Vow'd that if God to him the battle gave,
God's Dervish People all the Spoil should have.
And God the Battle gave him; and the Fruit
Of a great Conquest coming to compute,
A Murmur through the Sultan's Army stirr'd
Lest, ill committed to one hasty Word,
The Shah should squander on an idle Brood
What should be theirs who earn'd it with their Blood,
Or go to fill the Coffers of the State.
So Mahmúd's Soul began to hesitate:
Till looking round in Doubt from side to side
A raving Zealot in the Press he spied,
And call'd and had him brought before his Face,
And, telling, bid him arbitrate the case.
Who, having listen'd, said—“The Thing is plain:
If Thou and God should never have again
To deal together, rob him of his share:
But if perchance you should—why then Beware!”

So spake the Tajidar: but Fear and Doubt
Among the Birds in Whispers went about:
Great was their Need: and Succour to be sought
At any Risk: at any Ransom bought:
But such a Monarch—greater than Mahmúd
The Great Himself! Why how should he be woo'd
To listen to them? they too having come
So suddenly, and unprepared from home
With any Gold, or Jewel, or rich Thing
To carry with them to so great a King—
Poor Creatures! with the old and carnal Blind,
Spite of all said, so thick upon the Mind,
Devising how they might ingratiate
Access, as to some earthly Potentate.

“Let him that with this Monarch would engage
Bring the Gold Dust of a long Pilgrimage:
The Ruby of a bleeding Heart, whose Sighs
Breathe more than Amber-incense as it dies;
And while in naked Beggary he stands
Hope for the Robe of Honour from his Hands.”
And, as no gift this Sovereign receives
Save the mere Soul and Self of him who gives,
So let that Soul for other none Reward
Look than the Presence of its Sovereign Lord.”
And as his Hearers seem'd to estimate
Their Scale of Glory from Mahmúd the Great,
A simple Story of the Sultan told
How best a subject with his Shah made bold—

One night Shah Mahmúd who had been of late
Somewhat distemper'd with Affairs of State
Stroll'd through the Streets disguised, as wont to do—
And, coming to the Baths, there on the Flue
Saw the poor Fellow who the Furnace fed
Sitting beside his Water-jug and Bread.
Mahmúd stept in—sat down—unask'd took up
And tasted of the untasted Loaf and Cup,
Saying within himself, “Grudge but a bit,
And, by the Lord, your Head shall pay for it!”
So having rested, warm'd and satisfied
Himself without a Word on either side,
At last the wayward Sultan rose to go.
And then at last his Host broke silence—“So?—
A?? satisfied? Well, Brother, any Day
Or Night, remember, when you come this Way
And want a bit of Provender—why, you
Are welcome, and if not—why, welcome too.”—
The Sultan was so tickled with the whim
Of this quaint Entertainment and of him
Who offer'd it, that many a Night again
Stoker and Shah forgather'd in that Vein—
Till, the poor Fellow having stood the Test
Of true Good-fellowship, Mahmúd confess'd
One Night the Sultan that had been his Guest:
And in requital of the scanty Dole
The Poor Man offer'd with so large a soul,
Bid him ask any Largess that he would—
A Throne—if he would have it, so he should.
The Poor Man kiss'd the Dust, and “All,” said he,
“I ask is what and where I am to be;
If but the Shah from time to time will come
As now and see me in the lowly Home
His presence makes a palace, and my own
Poor Flue more royal than another's Throne.”

So said the cheery Tale: and, as they heard,
Again the Heart beneath the Feather stirr'd:
Again forgot the Danger and the Woes
Of the long Travel in its glorious Close:—
“Here truly all was Poverty, Despair
And miserable Banishment—but there
That more than Mahmúd, for no more than Prayer
Who would restore them to their ancient Place,
And round their Shoulders fling his Robe of Grace.”
They clapp'd their Wings, on Fire to be assay'd
And prove of what true Metal they were made,
Although defaced, and wanting the true Ring
And Superscription of their rightful King.
“The Road! The Road!” in countless voices cried
The Host—“The Road! and who shall be our Guide?”
And they themselves “The Tajidar!” replied:
Yet to make doubly certain that the Voice
Of Heav'n accorded with the People's Choice,
Lots should be drawn; and He on whom should light
Heav'n's Hand—they swore to follow him outright.
This settled, and once more the Hubbub quell'd,
Once more Suspense the Host in Silence held,
While, Tribe by Tribe, the Birds their Fortune drew;
And Lo! upon the Tajidar it flew.
Then rising up again in wide and high
Circumference of wings that mesh'd the sky
“The Tajidar! The Tajidar!” they cry—
“The Tajidar! The Tajidar!” with Him
Was Heav'n, and They would follow Life and Limb!
Then, once more fluttering to their Places down,
Upon his Head they set the Royal Crown
As Khalif of their Khalif so long lost,
And Captain of his now repentant Host;
And setting him on high, and Silence call'd,
The Tajidar, in Pulpit-throne install'd,
His Voice into a Trumpet-tongue so clear
As all the wingéd Multitude should hear
Raised, to proclaim the Order and Array
Of March; which, many as it frighten'd—yea,
The Heart of Multitudes at outset broke,
Yet for due Preparation must be spoke.

—A Road indeed that never Wing before
Flew, nor Foot trod, nor Heart imagined—o'er
Waterless Deserts—Waters where no Shore—
Valleys comprising cloudhigh Mountains: these
Again their Valleys deeper than the Seas:
Whose Dust all Adders, and whose vapour Fire:
Where all once hostile Elements conspire
To set the Soul against herself, and tear
Courage to Terror—Hope into Despair,
And Madness; Terrors, Trials, to make stray
Or stop where Death to wander or delay:
Where when half dead with Famine, Toil, and Heat,
'Twas Death indeed to rest, or drink, or eat.
A Road still waxing in Self-sacrifice
As it went on: still ringing with the Cries
And Groans of Those who had not yet prevail'd,
And bleaching with the Bones of those who fail'd:
Where, almost all withstood, perhaps to earn
Nothing: and, earning, never to return.—

And first the VALE OF SEARCH: an endless Maze,
Branching into innumerable Ways
All courting Entrance: but one right: and this
Beset with Pitfall, Gulf, and Precipice,
Where Dust is Embers, Air a fiery Sleet,
Through which with blinded Eyes and bleeding Feet
The Pilgrim stumbles, with Hyæna's Howl
Around, and hissing Snake, and deadly Ghoul,
Whose Prey he falls if tempted but to droop,
Or if to wander famish'd from the Troop
For fruit that falls to ashes in the Hand,
Water that reacht recedes into the Sand.
The only word is “Forward!” Guide in sight,
After him, swerving neither left nor right,
Thyself for thine own Victual by Day,
At night thine own Self's Caravanserai.
Till suddenly, perhaps when most subdued
And desperate, the Heart shall be renew'd
When deep in utter Darkness, by one Gleam
Of Glory from the far remote Harím,
That, with a scarcely conscious Shock of Change,
Shall light the Pilgrim toward the Mountain Range
Of KNOWLEDGE:

* In the original Poem there are Seven Valleys of Probation: not very significant in their Spiritual Outline, as Tholuck implies: and very confused in their Allegorical Detail, as G. de Tassy admits. Other great Sufi Doctors distinguished “The Road” of Self-perfection into other Stages, some more, some less in Number than Attar: but Tholuck tells us Three was the usual Scale of Gradation: and, one must admit, quite enough.

Vulgo tres solent majoris minorisve Perfectionis gradus Muhammedani numerare &c.—Ssufii vel pariter tres vel quatuor Gradus posuere. I Scheriat, Lex: II Terikat, Iter; III Hakikat, Veritas, quibus adjunxerunt quartam aliqui: IV Marifat, Cognitio. … In Metsnewi non inveni Gra-duum mentionem nisi T. 1. p. 72. ‘Quum videas Rubrum, aliosque Colores, qui fit ut non cernas hæc tria Lumina’— Sæpius ut solet prolixe de Lege, Itinere, Veritate, Attarus cornicatur … nec tamen significat memorabile quidquam nisi quod perpetuo asserat hos Gradus se invicem quasi in Nuce continere … Sex Gradus constituerat Bajesid, caput Ruscheniorum: I Lex. II Veritas. III Scientia. IV Appro-pinquatio. V Junctio. VI ◌ (indwelling in God) Quies in Deo &c. Refert doctissimus D. Leyden e Dabistano edocuisse Bajesidum patrem suum quatuor a Propheta ipso Gradus positos esse &c. &c. Tholuck's Ssufismus, Berol. 1821, p. 325 &c.

Till loom in sight Káf's Mountain Peak ashroud
In Mist—uncertain yet Mountain or Cloud,
But where the Pilgrim 'gins to hear the Tide
Of that one Sea in which the Sev'n subside;
And not the Sev'n Seas only: but the sev'n
And self-enfolded Spheres of Earth and Heav'n—
Yea, the Two Worlds, that now as Pictures sleep
Upon its Surface—but when once the Deep
From its long Slumber 'gins to heave and sway—
Under that Tempest shall be swept away
With all their Phases and Phenomena:
Not senseless Matter only, but combined
With Life in all Varieties of Kind;
Yea, ev'n the abstract Forms that Space and Time
Men call, and Weal and Woe, Virtue and Crime,
And all the several Creeds, like those who fell
Before them, Musulman and Infidel
Shall from the Face of Being melt away,
Cancell'd and swept as Dreams before the Day.
So hast thou seen the Astrologer prepare
His mystic Table smooth of Sand, and there
Inscribe his mystic Figures, Square, and Trine,
Circle and Pentagram, and heavenly Sign
Of Star and Planet: from whose Set and Rise,
Meeting and Difference, he prophesies;
And, having done it, with his Finger clean
Obliterates as never they had been.

Such is when reacht the Table Land of One
And Wonder: blazing with so fierce a Sun
Of Unity that blinds while it reveals
The Universe that to a Point congeals,
So, stunn'd with utter Revelation, reels
The Pilgrim, when that Double-seeming House,
Against whose Beams he long had chafed his Brows,
Crumbles and cracks before that Sea, whose near
And nearer Voice now overwhelms his Ear.
Till blinded, deafen'd, madden'd, drunk with doubt
Of all within Himself as all without,
Nay, whether a Without there be, or not,
Or a Within that doubts: and if, then what?—
Ev'n so shall the bewilder'd Pilgrim seem
When nearest waking deepliest in Dream,
And darkest next to Dawn; and lost what had
When All is found: and just when sane quite Mad—
As one that having found the Key once more
Returns, and Lo! he cannot find the Door
He stumbles over—So the Pilgrim stands
A moment on the Threshold—with raised Hands
Calls to the eternal Sáki for one Draught
Of Light from the One Essence: which when quaff'd,
He plunges headlong in: and all is well
With him who never more returns to tell.
Such being then the Race and such the Goal,
Judge if you must not Body both and Soul
With Meditation, Watch, and Fast prepare.
For he that wastes his Body to a Hair
Shall seize the Locks of Truth: and He that prays
Good Angels in their Ministry way-lays:
And the Midnightly Watcher in the Folds
Of his own Darkness God Almighty holds.
He that would prosper here must from him strip
The World, and take the Dervish Gown and Scrip:
And as he goes must gather from all Sides
Irrelevant Ambitions, Lusts, and Prides,
Glory and Gold, and sensual Desire,
Whereof to build the fundamental Pyre
Of Self-annihilation: and cast in
All old Relations and Regards of Kin
And Country: and, the Pile with this perplext
World platform'd, from the Fables of the Next
Raise it tow'rd Culmination, with the torn
Rags and Integuments of Creeds out-worn;
And top the giddy Summit with the Scroll
Of Reason that in dingy Smoke shall roll
Over the true Self-sacrifice of Soul:
(For such a Prayer was his—“Oh God, do Thou
With all my Wealth in the other World endow
My Friends: and with my Wealth in this my Foes,
Till bankrupt in thy Riches I repose!”)
Then, all the Pile completed of the Pelf
Of either World—at last throw on Thyself,
And with the Torch of Self-negation fire;
And ever as the Flames rise high and higher,
With Cries of agonizing Glory still
All of that Self burn up that burn up will,
Leaving the Phœnix that no Fire can slay
To spring from its own Ashes kindled—nay,
Itself an inextinguishable Spark
Of Being, now beneath Earth-ashes dark,
Transcending these, at last Itself transcends
And with the One Eternal Essence blends.

The Moths had long been exiled from the Flame
They worship: so to solemn Council came,
And voted One of them by Lot be sent
To find their Idol. One was chosen: went.
And after a long Circuit in sheer Gloom,
Seeing, he thought, the TAPER in a Room
Flew back at once to say so. But the chief
Of Mothistán slighted so slight Belief,
And sent another Messenger, who flew
Up to the House, in at the window, through
The Flame itself; and back the Message brings,
With yet no sign of Conflict on his wings.
Then went a Third, who spurr'd with true Desire,
Plunging at once into the sacred Fire,
Folded his Wings within, till he became
One Colour and one Substance with the Flame.
He only knew the Flame who in it burn'd;
And only He could tell who ne'er to tell return'd.

After declaring what of this declared
Must be, that all who went should be prepared,
From his high Station ceased the Tajidar—
And lo! the Terrors that, when told afar,
Seem'd but as Shadows of a Noon-day Sun,
Now that the talkt of Thing was to be done,
Lengthening into those of closing Day
Strode into utter Darkness: and Dismay
Like Night on the husht Sea of Feathers lay,
Late so elate—“So terrible a Track!
Endless—or, ending, never to come back!—
Never to Country, Family, or Friend!”—
In sooth no easy Bow for Birds to bend!—
Even while he spoke, how many Wings and Crests
Had slunk away to distant Woods and Nests;
Others again in Preparation spent
What little Strength they had, and never went:
And others, after preparation due—
When up the Veil of that first Valley drew
From whose waste Wilderness of Darkness blew
A Sarsar, whether edged of Flames or Snows,
That through from Root to Tip their Feathers froze—
Up went a Multitude that overhead
A moment darken'd, then on all sides fled,
Dwindling the World-assembled Caravan
To less than half the Number that began.
Of those who fled not, some in Dread and Doubt
Sat without stirring: others who set out
With frothy Force, or stupidly resign'd,
Before a League, flew off or fell behind.
And howsoever the more Brave and Strong
In Courage, Wing, or Wisdom push'd along,
Yet League by League the Road was thicklier spread
By the fast falling Foliage of the Dead:
Some spent with Travel over Wave and Ground;
Scorcht, frozen, dead for Drought, or drinking drown'd.
Famisht, or poison'd with the Food when found:
By Weariness, or Hunger, or Affright
Seduced to stop or stray, become the Bite
Of Tiger howling round or hissing Snake,
Or Crocodile that eyed them from the Lake:
Or raving Mad, or in despair Self-slain:
Or slaying one another for a Grain:—

Till of the mighty Host that fledged the Dome
Of Heav'n and Floor of Earth on leaving Home,
A Handfull reach'd and scrambled up the Knees
Of Káf whose Feet dip in the Seven Seas;
And of the few that up his Forest-sides
Of Light and Darkness where The Presence hides,
But Thirty—thirty desperate draggled Things,
Half-dead, with scarce a Feather on their Wings,
Stunn'd, blinded, deafen'd with the Crash and Craze
Of Rock and Sea collapsing in a Blaze
That struck the Sun to Cinder—fell upon
The Threshold of the Everlasting One,
With but enough of Life in each to cry,
On THAT which all absorb'd—

And suddenly

Forth flash'd a wingéd Harbinger of Flame
And Tongue of Fire, and “Who?” and “Whence they came?”
And “Why?” demanded. And the Tajidar
For all the Thirty answer'd him—“We are
Those Fractions of the Sum of Being, far
Dis-spent and foul disfigured, that once more
Strike for Admission at the Treasury Door.”

To whom the Angel answer'd—“Know ye not
That He you seek recks little who or what
Of Quantity and Kind—himself the Fount
Of Being Universal needs no Count
Of all the Drops o'erflowing from his Urn,
In what Degree they issue or return?”

Then cried the Spokesman, “Be it even so:
Let us but see the Fount from which we flow,
And, seeing, lose Ourselves therein!” And, Lo!
Before the Word was utter'd, or the Tongue
Of Fire replied, or Portal open flung,
They were within—they were before the Throne,
Before the Majesty that sat thereon,
But wrapt in so insufferable a Blaze
Of Glory as beat down their baffled Gaze,
Which, downward dropping, fell upon a Scroll
That, Lightning-like, flash'd back on each the whole
Past half-forgotten Story of his Soul:
Like that which Yúsuf in his Glory gave
His Brethren as some Writing he would have
Interpreted; and at a Glance, behold
Their own Indenture for their Brother sold!
And so with these poor Thirty: who, abasht
In Memory all laid bare and Conscience lasht,
By full Confession and Self-loathing flung
The Rags of carnal Self that round them clung;
And, their old selves self-knowledged and self-loathed,
And in the Soul's Integrity re-clothed,
Once more they ventured from the Dust to raise
Their Eyes—up to the Throne—into the Blaze,
And in the Centre of the Glory there
Beheld the Figure of—Themselves

* “Symurgh” signifies “Thirty Birds.”

This was the Parliament of Birds: and this
The Story of the Host who went amiss,
And of the Few that better Upshot found;
Which being now recounted, Lo, the Ground
Of Speech fails underfoot: But this to tell—
Their Road is thine—Follow—and Fare thee well.