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A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
BEING TRANSLATIONS FROM THE PERSIAN
BY
EDWARD GRANVILLE BROWNE
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR BY
J. B. ATKINS
EDITED BY
E. DENISON ROSS
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. Introductory Memoir I
By J. B. Atkins
II. Note on Persian Poetry . . . . 45
By E. Denison Ross
III. List of Poets Represented . . .61
IV. Poems:
Occasional 67
Mystic 75
Lyric 95
Moral 112
Narrative 140
V. Prose Passages 156
VI. Index of First Lines 163
vii
A Persian Anthology
i
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR
EDWARD GRANVILLE BROWNE
By J. B. ATKINS
AS an intimate friend of Professor
-^^Browne during a considerable part
of his Cambridge days, I have been asked
to write some " impressions and reminis¬
cences " of him as a Pembroke man. I
had no share in his Oriental studies and
very little understanding of them, but I may
plead that a knowledge of what he was as
a Fellow of Pembroke and of what he did
for generations of Pembroke undergraduates
is the right equipment for my particular
task.
2 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
An appreciation of Browne's Oriental
scholarship has been written by his successor
in the Sir Thomas Adams Professorship of
Arabic, Professor R. A. Nicholson, and is
printed together with Browne's catalogue
of his own Oriental MSS. A biographical
memoir of Browne has been written by his
friend Sir Denison Ross, the Principal of
the School of Oriental Studies in London,
and appears in the new edition of Browne's
fascinating book of travel and research (or
should I not rather say of conversation ?),
A Tear Amongst the Persians. It remains
for me to tell the reader of this Persian
Anthology why Browne had the affection
and gratitude of all Pembroke men, even of
those to whom his scholarship meant nothing
and to whom his political sympathies were
strange. I shall say no more about Browne's
immersion in Persian, Arabic, and Turkish
thought and literature than is necessary to
illustrate his character, his habits of mind,
and his methods of conversation ; yet I
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 3
must premise that it would be impossible
to describe him at all without interpreting
him liberally in terms of the great intellectual
passion of his life.
When, as a freshman at Pembroke, I
first met Browne, he had not long returned
to the College as a Fellow and a University
Lecturer in Persian, after having qualified
as a doctor in London and having spent his
year amongst the Persians. Through cer¬
tain predecessors of mine in the College he
knew about me, and I knew much more
about him. He asked me to his rooms—
the rooms in Ivy Court which had been
occupied by the younger Pitt. I recall
him as he rose from his table to receive
me then ; and during many years afterwards
I saw him often with the same look and
bearing encountering any visitors who
entered his room while he was at work.
For a moment he gazed at me as though
he were emerging from a deep abstraction ;
as though he were refocusing the world,
4 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
and incidentally focusing me. Truly, one
might think it needed a flying carpet to
convey him at once from the world repre¬
sented by those MSS., of curious and
exquisite caligraphy, which were spread
over his table to the plane of an ordinary
and very Occidental undergraduate. But
to Browne the process of interruption and
adjustment was unconscious, and, I might
surmise from the rush of friendliness with
which he greeted me, even agreeable.
I soon asked him if I might look at
the MSS., and I was instantly struck by
the manner in which he described his chief
treasures. He talked with enthusiasm, with
elaboration ; he told me there and then
the essential part of the story of the Bab,
the martyred founder of the modern Persian
sect which had been the principal object
of his researches in Persia. There was
nothing perfunctory in his exposition ; he
talked as though he were talking to another
Oriental scholar. He picked up the MS.
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 5
which he said was the most precious Babi
document in his possession ; he had obtained
it after much toil and disappointment at
the very end of his visit to Persia. Then
he began to read from a passage which
was in verse, and for the first time I heard
that rhythmical intonation which was to
become very familiar to me and often
sounds in my ears to this day. As he
recited, the fire of a rhapsodist burned
in his eyes. The memory of his Persian
travels was still fresh upon him ; he seemed
to be thinking of Persia—indeed, to be a
Persian—and to be conversing with another
traveller as he perhaps gazed across the
endless parasangs of the Persian plain
looking for that dim cluster of dwellings
or that elusive caravanserai which should
be the next halting-place. After thus de¬
claiming a few lines, he added a transla¬
tion—a merciful habit which, as I afterwards
discovered, he scarcely ever neglected.
Another thing which impressed me in
6 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
this conversation was how perfectly his lips
appeared to be constructed by nature for
the production of Oriental sounds. Here
was a case, as it seemed, of predestination.
His impulse towards the East when he was
still a boy of sixteen had no traceable
derivations from his ordinary English sur¬
roundings, yet it was unconquerable. He
evolved his plans inexplicably out of his
own heart, and the physical apparatus, by a
miraculous coincidence, was waiting to fulfil
them with a rare linguistic aptitude. When
I came to know him well, he told me how
his boyish sympathies, by some instinct
which he could not analyse but which was
deep and strong, ran counter to public
feeling in England during the Russo-
Turkish War. He does not seem to have
made the question of Turkish atrocities a
test ; he was conscious only of a burning
desire to support the smaller nation whose
existence, with all its peculiar and pic¬
turesque attributes, was threatened by the
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR
advance of the mighty and ruthless Slav
from the North — the "Russian steam¬
roller " of those days. He conceived the
passionate idea of learning Turkish and,
as soon as he was old enough, obtaining a
commission in the British Army, with the sole
purpose of offering his help to Turkey when he
had learned enough of the military profession.
That was a dream which, like most
boyish dreams, was not to come true ; but
the eastward yearning remained and de¬
veloped. I may say here that Browne's
love of a minority was always the chief of
his guiding principles. Grave faults in a
people, such as corruption, an <4 impossible "
attitude towards the comity of nations, even
cruelty—he would not let one of these
faults tilt the scale against what was to
him the supreme offence in a greater nation
of restricting by force the freedom of a
smaller. It was on these grounds, and not
because he was, or could be, tolerant of
cruelty, that he was able to make allowances
8 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
for crimes in any people, or in any man,
whom he conceived of as more sinned
against than sinning.
He would speak with genuine regard,
for instance, of Ferhad Mirza, a man of
perfect courtliness and dignity, who had
been very civil and helpful to him in Persia ;
yet he never tried to disguise the fact that
Ferhad Mirza, as Governor of the province
of Fars, had enforced his rule by burying
alive, by strangling, and by cutting off the
hands of his enemies by the hundred.
This is not really so great a paradox as it
seems. Browne had projected himself into
the mind of the East and understood how
a Persian, though pious and learned, could
look upon human suffering as an immaterial
thing.
He understood ; but for himself he held
unimpaired his own gentle-heartedness, his
extreme generosity, his quick and lavish
sympathy, and—the necessary obverse and
counterpart of these things—his fierce
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 9
indignation against all who sinned against
the light.
I had only one serious disagreement with
Browne which briefly strained our friend¬
ship, and that came long after I had left
Cambridge, at the time of the Anglo-Russian
Agreement. I had been writing in support
of this Agreement, which assigned spheres
of influence to Russia in the North of
Persia and to Great Britain in the South.
Browne took the view that by this arrange¬
ment Great Britain was callously condoning
the rapacity of " the wickedest Power on
earth," as he called Russia. I argued that
though I did not like the Agreement, it
was in fact better than a policy*of emptily
denouncing Russia. We could not keep
Russia out of Persia, which she seemed
determined to penetrate ; it was not prac¬
tical politics to talk of going^to war with
her ; and in the circumstances it seemed
wise to enter into an Agreement which not
only gave us a title to discuss Persian
10 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
affairs with her, but definitely withheld
from her penetration the greater part of
Southern Persia. Browne refused to accept
the argument of expediency. He was con¬
scious only of the wrong of seeming to
regularize Russian aggression. We agreed
to disagree ; but though I lamented our differ¬
ence at the time, I have treasured his letters
on this subject above others as particular
proofs of his wonderful power of " speaking
straight " to his friends and of not letting
affection and indignation destroy each other.
*****
I have anticipated deliberately because it
was necessary to put Browne firmly and at
once in his Persian setting. Within a
few weeks of my first meeting with him
I became one of those—they were many—
who habitually drifted into his rooms to
end the day with talking and smoking.
What evenings they were ! Browne ful¬
filled to admiration the apophthegm of
Terence, for he was interested in all human
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR n
affairs. When he talked, and he was
seldom silent for long, he talked as well
as he knew how—and indeed he knew no
other way of talking—to the least as well as
to the most promising company.
It has been related that when Pitt was
choosing a congenial company to stay with
him at Wimbledon, a certain man was
recommended to him as being able to talk
very good sense. " But can he talk non¬
sense ? " asked Pitt. That was what Browne
could do to perfection. It was the per¬
sistent aim of his friends in Pembroke to
provoke him into starting off on one of his
antipathies : the " good old fortifying cur¬
riculum " of the public schools, in Matthew
Arnold's phrase, in other words the tra¬
ditional English method of teaching lan¬
guages ; the indifference of the Government
to the teaching of Oriental languages in a
practical way to those who were preparing
for Consular posts in the East ; the waste
of time at College meetings, and so on.
12 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
There is, I think, no greater intellectual
treat than to hear an original and witty-
man running free in discourse with exag¬
gerations and inversions when one is able
to recognize (as one always could with
Browne) the purpose upon which the gay
and variegated tapestry is woven. Browne
did not deal in the quick thrust and cut
of conversation. I have used the word
" discourse," and that describes his method.
He was by no means a monopolist ; he was
always ready to stop when he was in full
flood and listen to anyone else as long as
that person cared to talk. But no one
really wanted to stop Browne when he was
off. The only anxiety had been to get him
going. I have never heard anyone talk so
fast as he did when he was possessed by
his subject. The words came in a torrent.
His denunciations, which obviously gave
him as much pleasure as they gave his
audience, were exquisitely entertaining.
Such evenings may seem to have been a
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 13
kind of intellectual dissipation, but actually
they had a great power of inspiration. Dull
must he have been of soul who did not
catch fire from some of the flying sparks
of that mental commerce, who did not have
new paths of thought opened to him, or
who did not find that some aspiration had
lodged in a part of his mind that before
had been vacant. It was Browne as much
as any man who helped Pembroke to be
in fact what he believed Cambridge could
be to all—a society that could form, enlarge,
and give a chance to everybody, though all
other agents might have failed.
His own experience was the ground of
this conviction. He had not been happy
at either Glenalmond or Eton, but when
he came to Cambridge he was like a fish
which after gasping in a shallow suddenly
finds itself in the freedom of great waters.
Again, when he had left Cambridge to
qualify as a doctor at St. Bartholomew's
Hospital, he was not happy till he was
14 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
elected a Fellow of Pembroke, was able
to abandon medicine, to travel in Persia,
and to look forward to a long application
at Cambridge to the only studies he cared
for. That reward had been nobly earned
by the astonishing enthusiasm and industry
which had enabled him to take the Indian
Languages Tripos even while he was passing
his medical examinations at Cambridge.
He used to say that public schools were
no place for a boy who could not fit himself
into a strait-waistcoat and that unconven¬
tional talents were seldom discovered and
never encouraged there. But Cambridge !
At Cambridge the saddest worm of the
public schools—not that Browne himself
ever had the faintest resemblance to a
worm, but his heart was large enough to
like worms—could be rehabilitated, could
become aware that he belonged, after all,
to a much higher order of life. He could
find sympathy and companions for any
adventure of the mind and would no longer
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 15
be conscious of disregard or dispraise. His
rights were as good as other rights, and
were recognized to be so. As an under¬
graduate, Browne had joined in all the
athletic as well as intellectual interests of
the College, because he could do so of his
own will and not by compulsion. He had
rowed in one of the College boats, and during
his many years afterwards at Pembroke he
seldom failed to follow the crews and cheer
them on in the more important races.
To all his intimate friends at Pembroke
he was known as " Johnny." Sir Denison
Ross has complained that there has seldom
been a more inappropriate nickname. He
will allow me to disagree. I do not know
the origin of the name, and it is no doubt
true that if one cast around now for a
name to describe what Hazlitt would have
called the " extreme characteristic impres¬
sion " of Browne, one would not choose
" Johnny." Nevertheless, it is not only the
name that fits the man ; a man in time
16 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
comes by association to fit his name almost
as well as a dog fits any name that may be
imposed on him—so well indeed that he
cannot thereafter be imagined by any other
name. To those who were at Pembroke
with Browne he could not possibly have
been anything but Johnny. He lived two
lives—both completely blameless. During
the day he was teaching Oriental languages
to men of various races and various colours
from various Colleges, but at night he was
Johnny among Pembroke men.
Any time after ten o'clock men would
begin dropping into his rooms, and often
the talk would not end till those early
hours which the Persian proverb, as we
duly learned, describes as " between the
wolf and the sheep." Johnny, whom we
kept from his bed with a complete lack of
consideration, would sometimes relapse into
the silence of exhaustion, which would last
till some provocative statement startled him
into renewed activity. His return to the
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 17
attack would always begin in these circum¬
stances (as was recalled by Dr. W. S.
Hadley, the Master of Pembroke, in a
charming memorial note in the Cambridge
Review) with a loud and sudden " No ! "
By the use of carefully timed controversial
assertions one might almost have kept
Johnny going for ever.
In moments of heat he had a delightful
habit of letting a Persian or Arabic tag—
duly translated after he had quoted the
original—take the place of a retort that
might have seemed to him intemperate.
" My dear So-and-So," he would exclaim,
" as the Persian proverb says, ' There is no
colour darker than black Or, " What
happens to us is simply the result of what
we ourselves have done." Or, " As Sa'di
says, ' It is better to go barefoot than in
tight shoes ' "—this in support of his recur¬
rent theme that " progress " forced upon
so-called backward countries means a stupid
crushing of individuality. Or, " As the
c
18 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Arabic proverb says, ' The dignity of the
dwelling is in the dweller Most of us
probably did not guess at first how thor¬
oughly Browne's art of improvising was in
the Persian manner. He would often turn
a Persian verse on the spur of the moment
into well-sounding English rhyme. He
loved rhyming prose and any play upon
words. " Travel is travail," he continually
said, though he would add—" the Persians
really call it Hell."
Something like this runs in my memory
as a specimen of Browne's talking at large,
though it necessarily leaves out all the fire
which blazed in his personality :—
" Under our magnificent system of Gov¬
ernment—so rational, so foreseeing !—the
authorities make a point of never letting a
man learn how to talk an Eastern language
as he will hear it talked by the people he is
going to live among. Why should he ?
He might lose touch with the British view
if he made a habit of finding our what
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 19
Persians and Arabs and people of that sort
really thought ! It's the most glorious
system in the world—the sun never sets
on it. Of course it has got to go on. It's
sanctioned by public opinion, which regards
it as a necessary part of Imperialism, and
Imperialism as a necessary part of progress.
All of which shows the wisdom of the
excellent Gustave le Bon, who pointed out
that the individual opinions of a crowd of
reasonable people when joined together do
not necessarily make a reasonable opinion
in the mass, but generally something per¬
fectly absurd.
" When I wanted to learn Turkish as an
undergraduate, I discovered that this great
centre of learning made no provision what¬
ever for learning Turkish. The thing
couldn't be done. The future Stratford de
Redcliffes must go without, so far as Cam¬
bridge was concerned under the inspiration
of the Government. The less Turkish the
better for understanding Turkish diplomacy !
20 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
" Anyhow, I did find out in Cambridge
that if I wanted to understand Turkish
properly I had better learn Persian first. I
discovered a strange youth in Cambridge
who talked Persian and Arabic exquisitely
and seemed to be bored to death with them
both. What he really loved doing was
playing the fiddle, which he did abominably
so far as I could judge—though I don't
know much even about bad fiddle-playing.
I offered to exchange languages with him,
or pay him, or make any arrangement he
liked ; but he didn't seem to want to learn
any other languages or to want anything at
all except sympathy with the sounds he
produced on the infernal fiddle. So the
end of it was he used to teach me Persian
for an hour, and for the next hour I had to
listen to him scraping away on the fiddle
and to try to look pleased."
Here some undergraduate says, " Johnny,
didn't you play yourself on the ocarina ? "
" No," says Johnny, " I didn't. I used
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 21
to try sometimes, because Blank in my year
had an ocarina. The man in the rooms
above him had to leave in consequence.
And later on there was a regular movement
against the ocarina, which was seized and
smashed up. I was very glad. It was
worse than that Christ's man on the fiddle."
" But I thought," says someone else,
" that you learnt Persian from an old boy
in Limehouse ? "
" So I did," goes on Johnny. " He was
an amazing person, a poet and a philosopher.
I learnt from him later. He lived in a dirty
lodging in Limehouse and seemed to have
a good deal of money. He had invented
the most complicated and grotesque system
of theology I ever came across. He didn't
in the least want to teach me Persian. He
only wanted to explain his system—full of
visions all about the saints of all the various
faiths mixed up together, and yellow devils,
and bears, and lions that ate grass, and bosh
of that sort. Whenever I wanted to read
22 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Hafiz he brought out his system with the
bears and devils for hours. He said no one
but himself could explain it—which I'm
sure was quite true.
" After I had listened for months I saw
the end coming, and I thought that at last
we could get on with Hafiz. But not a
bit of it. He then produced a critical
commentary on the Koran in verse which
he had written, and insisted on reading the
whole thing to me with more comments in
prose. One day he said that he hoped I
would spend more time with him every day,
as the doctor had told him that his daughter
would die if she stayed any longer in
England, and he couldn't possibly go till he
had finished expounding the commentary
to me ! "
Here an undergraduate remarks, "You
ought to have married the daughter, Johnny,
and gone away with the family "
" And the yellow devils and the lions,"
says Johnny. " No. It's a hard business
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 23
to learn Persian in England, no doubt, but
there are limits to zeal "
The undergraduate interrupts again with
" What happened to the daughter ? "
" I'm sorry to say she died," replies
Johnny. (Here the undergraduate makes
a sound which should perhaps be described
as sympathetic laughter.) " But it wasn't
my fault. I heard the commentary to the
end, and the family got off as soon as they
could. It was Persian under difficulties, of
course. But mark this—I learned more
Persian in six weeks even in that way than
I had learned of Latin and Greek in six
years."
The material things by which this uncon¬
ventional mind was surrounded showed a
spirit in some ways curiously conservative.
Apart from the Persian drawings, tiles,
pottery, and rugs, Browne's choice in pictures
was from the conventional art of his day,
but his conservatism was chiefly exhibited
in his unwillingness to remove or repair
24 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
anything. Some drawings which Byam
Shaw did in a few minutes one night in
Browne's rooms hung on the walls, where
they had been fixed with drawing-pins, till
they disintegrated from wear and tear (par¬
ticularly tear), and the same fate at last
brought an end to a poster announcing a
May Week performance by the A.D.C.
I recall, too, Browne's characteristic hostility
to the proposal, towards the end of his life,
that the ivy should be removed from the
walls of the court into which his windows
looked. The removal, as he at length
admitted, exposed admirable brickwork and
was, besides, necessary for the salvation of
the buildings, but he did not for all that
cease to mourn his familiar ivy. This
conservatism was, of course, only a small
part of his mental make.-up. He had a
taste for vivid colours, and when he desired
that one of his books about Persia should
be bound, not in the dull hues associated
with works of scholarship, but in the
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 25
Pembroke colours (dark and light blue), we
all felt that the choice was a charmingly
right one for him.
He had a kind of half-derisive, half-
affectionate regard for melodrama. He
would narrate with gusto the plots of The
Silver King (which he called the greatest
of all melodramas) and White Heather.
11 All the human passions, the villain killed,
and right triumphant. What more can you
want ? That's the way to educate the
public ! " He well understood the value
of what Lord Morley of Blackburn called
" the irony of literal statement." When
facts conveyed their own irony he was
careful by instinct to let them speak for
themselves. For this reason his narrations
of droll incidents were inimitable. He did
not tell such stories as could be thrown
into the common stock of stories that are
passed from mouth to mouth ; the drollery
was in the telling, and the incidents were
nearly always within his own experience.
26 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Sometimes when he was in the mood to
quote freely from Persian or Arabic, his
friends would persuade him to go further,
to take down a book and read a compara¬
tively long piece—-just because we liked the
sound of it, though generally there was
not a man in the room who understood one
word. A favourite poem was one by Qurrat
ul-'Ayn, the martyred woman of Babi faith.
Browne's translation of it, with its ingenious
internal rhyming, always seemed to me,
who judged of course by English standards,
to be the best of his many translations. The
reader may see the translation for himself,
as it is included in this work. It begins,
" The thralls of yearning love constrain."
English books from which Browne was
fond of reading aloud were F. Anstey's
books (which he almost knew by heart),
particularly Mr. Punch's 2~oung Reciter and
Vice Versa, and Mr. Edward Carpenter's
Towards Democracy. I shall never forget
Browne's delighted declamation of " Posi-
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 27
tively the Last Performance " and " Filial
Little Frank " and " Juniper Jem " from
the Toung Reciter. He would shout out
with triumph at the end of " Juniper Jem "
the shattering answer to the cynical sugges¬
tion that anyone could have emulated the
feat of the heroic child in riding the
favourite to victory when his father (who
bore the significant surname of Roper) had
been " warned off," because the child had
stuck himself on with cobbler's wax :—
"Well, the answer to that is, Try it yourself at
Purlingham Park on Dot and Go One ! "
It was a happy day for Browne when
Mr. Guthrie (F. Anstey), whom he had not
before known personally, was brought by
me to Cambridge. He stayed with Browne
and his wife, four or five years before
Browne's death. One evening there was a
party in Pembroke, at which speeches were
made by Browne and others in honour of
one who has not yet received all the praise
28 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
due to him, and Mr. Guthrie was persuaded
to recite " Positively the Last Performance."
As for Towards Democracy, Browne told us
that when he was a medical student in
London he used to escape on Sundays to
Epping Forest and carry with him for his
solace either a Persian book or Towards
Democracy. He did not take Mr. Carpenter
very seriously, but he loved the diatribes
against society as it is constituted, the
rhetoric in the manner of Walt Whitman,
and the hubbub of words. He could read
Towards Democracy faster than I should have
thought it possible for the human tongue
to frame the words, yet every sound was
plainly articulated.
No trouble was too great for Browne in
entertaining his guests. He was a lavish
and unceasing entertainer. He was, how¬
ever, indifferent to food and drink as such ;
luncheon or dinner was only an excuse for
bringing his friends together. His taste
in wines was anarchical. He would praise
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 29
some strange exotic wine which he had
acquired as an experiment ; and there is no
doubt that he rather liked champagne sweet.
His favourite drink was tea, which he
brewed very strong, and the number of
brewings during a long evening was nearly-
incredible. When he had married and was
living at Firwood, in Trumpington Road,
he would work at night instead of talking
as in the old days, but tea again played its
part. Pie used to make tea for himself
about eleven o'clock and work till one
o'clock, or sometimes till two or three in
the morning.
When I first knew him he used to smoke
a pipe. I never saw such a collection of
pipes as his. When he had smoked a pipe
for a few weeks one side of it was knocked
almost entirely away by vigorous banging
on the fireplace, and inside the caked bowl
there was left but a tiny slit for the tobacco.
It may have been that he found this method
of smoking unsatisfactory, for I had not
30 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
known him long before he gave up smoking
pipes—and also cigars, which he had smoked
occasionally after good dinners—and con¬
centrated with enthusiasm upon Turkish
cigarettes.
The Persian manner of giving a dinner
party, he would inform a sceptical audience,
was really much better than the European.
" The idea is to put eating in its proper
place," he would say. " So the Persians
drink and talk and only eat just enough
snacks of food to keep them going all the
evening. Then, right at the end, they have
a serious meal, which they eat quickly and
practically in silence. Now, here we start
by eating till we are much too sleepy to
talk "—(Loud chorus of " You aren't,
Johnny ! "). " Well, anyhow, I might talk
more if I wasn't so sleepy "—(Chorus of
" Oh, no, you couldn't ! "). " The whole
thing is preposterous. The Persians, of
course, are an exceptionally sane people "
—and so on. It was not only that Browne
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 31
was always animated ; he always caused
animation in others. At the high table, in
the Combination Room, or at the College
Literary Society, the Martlets, which was
named after those heraldic legless birds in
the College arms, the talk was always
excellent when Browne was present.
The name of the Martlets reminds me of
a sailing-boat called the Martlet which
Browne and I and others owned, and in
which we used to sail in the fascinating
Fen country. The boat had belonged to
two or three generations of Pembroke men,
and as an institution it came to an end
because, after I had gone down, Browne
forgot to nominate new part-owners. Thus
the Martlet became his sole property and
also his sole responsibility. She was housed
at the time of his forgetfulness by a boat-
builder at Ely, and when Browne's attention
was called to the matter the bill for yard-
room and care already amounted, I fear, to
a great deal more than the boat was worth.
32 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
But when the Martlet was in commission
and the owners were all enthusiasts (except
Browne, who joined us out of friendship
and not from love of sailing) we had great
times : long sails anywhere between Clay-
hithe and Denver on days when we could
get away from rowing and other sports or
on Sundays. We used to leave the boat
where we landed, generally quite untended,
and walk to the nearest railway station.
The next time we would take a train to the
same station, and we were lucky enough
always to find the Martlet where we had
left her.
She was a cranky craft with little ballast
and no keel. She was wrecked once ; and
the wreck was Browne's favourite story
about the Martlet, unless indeed it yielded
place to his pathetic and vivid story of how
we met the Dean on Sunday in Tennis
Court Road when we had cut Chapel and
were walking to the station. It must be
explained that Chapel was very strictly
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 33
attended in those days, and the admirable
Dean was even more personally pained than
officially outraged by the conduct of those
who absented themselves. The owners of
the Martlet, when going to catch the eleven-
fifteen o'clock train to Ely on Sunday
morning, had experienced several times the
embarrassment of meeting the Dean in
Trumpington Street as he walked to the
College for the service. In order to avoid
this embarrassment to him and themselves
they decided on the next Sunday to take
the parallel route of Tennis Court Road.
It so happened that Browne was with us
that Sunday—and he a Fellow. By a
miserable but intelligible irony of fate the
anxious Dean, sportsmanlike though out¬
raged, had hit upon the same plan. In
that narrow, high-walled defile which is, or
was, Tennis Court Road, we saw him
coming, a lonely figure. No sooner had we
seen him than we knew from the highly
conscious unconcern of his movements that
D
34 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
he had detected us. It was too late to turn
back. Pride forbade that. So we gradually
approached each other, both sides becoming
preternaturally interested in the architecture
of the Downing wall on one side and the
lodging-houses on the other. Then came,
for it had to be, the fatal encounter, with the
sickly smiles of salutation on both sides,
the passing in silence, and the slow con¬
valescence from the shock.
Browne sailed with us, as I said, out of
friendship, and he even went so far in
friendship as to sail with me for a week on
the Norfolk Broads in snowy weather. But
the fact was that his kindness and generosity
were without bounds. To the Orientals,
not merely those in Cambridge but those
elsewhere in England and even in France,
who could invent any plausible excuse for
coming to see him he was an unfailing
helper, counsellor, and benefactor. The
sum of his gifts will never be known. I
fear that he was often imposed upon, but he
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 35
took risks with his eyes open, feeling that
these strangers had a peculiar claim upon
him. To Englishmen, too, particularly Pem¬
broke men, he was unfailingly generous,
perhaps too generous.
I like to recall one delightfully charac¬
teristic remark which he made to me after
I had condoled with him in a certain dis¬
appointment. He had lent liberally to a
friend who turned out to be not merely
untrustworthy but callous. After Browne
had confessed his pain at the discovery—for
that was the trouble, not the loss of the
money—and after he had duly quoted an
Arabic proverb that " Borrowing is the
scissors of friendship," he evidently fell
into some apprehension lest I might think
that what he had said would cut me off
for ever from the possibility of asking him
to lend me money ! " Don't forget," he
said, or rather stammered, suddenly, as I
was going out of the room, " if ever it
would be a help to you to have a loan of
36 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
a couple of hundred pounds or so, you have
only to let me know. I understand what all
the difficulties are in these days, and I can't
tell you what a pleasure it would be "—etc.
Here was the man of intensely subtle mind
speaking with the simple adorable awkward¬
ness of a child in earnest. No wonder his
friends loved him.
I have written mainly so far of Johnny
Browne as the companion of leisure hours,
for that was the capacity in which most of
us knew him ; and in doing so I have
necessarily put the emphasis on the lighter
side of his character and accomplishments.
But though few of his friends in the College
understood his work, they were perfectly
conscious of its importance. They knew, on
testimony which they could not doubt, that he
was the greatest Persian scholar of his time.
By what methods had he reached so high a
fame ? I can judge only by what he told me
himself and by what I have read in his writings.
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 37
To begin with, he was interested in a
language not because he found it interesting
structurally, not because it amused him to
run to earth strange grammatical forms as
a botanist delightedly discovers rare plants,
but because it was the vehicle of the
thoughts of people whose life and customs
and ideas attracted him. Because Persians
attracted him he saturated himself in the
Persian language, thought in it, probably
dreamed in it. Most " Orientalists " have
only a literary knowledge of the languages
they profess, but Browne must be able to
converse easily in a language or it meant
little to him. He was " soul-hydroptic with
a sacred thirst " to get at what was in that
language, and yet not at all in the sense
in which Browning applied the words to
the Renaissance grammarian who " properly
based ovv " and " gave us the doctrine of
the enclitic Se." Browne was not a par¬
ticularly good speaker of European lan¬
guages ; he spoke with facility, and of course
38 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
intelligently, but he did not breathe their
atmosphere as he breathed that of Persian.
The Turkish phase of his boyhood passed,
though he kept his sympathy with Turkey ;
the Hindustani which he had learned for
his Tripos never cast any spell upon him ;
in Persian, and in a secondary degree in
Arabic, he found the enthusiasms of his
life. I gathered that it was Gobineau's
work on Persia more than any other which
made him long to visit Persia ; in particular
he was deeply moved by Gobineau's account
of the rise of Babiism and the martyrdom of
the early apostles of the new sect. Renan
has drawn attention to the remarkable
parallelism between the rise of this faith
in the middle of the nineteenth century
and the origins of Christianity. Browne
went to Persia, then, with no stronger single
desire than to inquire into Babiism.
He would not often talk about Babiism
at Pembroke except in the presence of a
very few friends ; it was not with him a
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 39
subject for chatter. From what he told me
I judge that the essential nobility of Babiism
in its first form would have made a much
deeper mark on his life if later developments
of the faith, and the defects of some of the
Babis he knew, had not disappointed him.
Although he was entranced by the luxuriant
imagery in the conversation of most of
the Babis he met in Southern Persia, and
was drugged by the subtlety of their
philosophical and theological speculations,
he was nevertheless conscious of a certain
disgust at their vainglorious assumption of
divinity—helped as it was by wine and
opium-smoking. He was at once fascinated
and repelled.
Babiism, by the time Browne arrived in
Persia, had already split into two parties,
the followers of Beha and the followers of
Subh-i-Ezel. Now, Browne felt that Subh-
i-Ezel, who had been nominated by the
Bab himself, was the true leader ; yet his
followers were a mere handful. Babiism
40 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
was rapidly becoming Behaism. Browne's
disappointment at the successful usurpation
grew into something like annoyance when
Behaism, with excrescences, became a cult
in America. Still, it is fair to say that no
experience in his life had touched him so
deeply as the story of the Babi martyrdoms,
the heroism and the constancy ; and he
found no contradiction of those great begin¬
nings in the lives of a few Babis he encoun¬
tered, men of extreme simplicity, piety, and
courage under persecution. In a copy of one
of his books on Babiism which he gave to
me he wrote four lines from a modern Per¬
sian poet and appended this translation :—
You ask, Was the path that these followed
Uncertain or easy and plain r
It is easv to tind by the milestones
Built white with the bones of the slain.
A Year Amongst the Persians was published
in 1893, and one reviewer caused Browne
considerable distress by a severe attack upon
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 41
the manner of the book, especially the intro¬
duction, which he found " unbecoming " in
a University teacher. Browne humorously
worked off his feelings by constructing a
hideous little image of cork, which he placed
on his chimney-piece, calling it by the name
of the supposed reviewer and for some
time pouring upon it daily execrations. He
was mistaken about the authorship of the
review, and did not discover his mistake
till many years later. What the reviewer
lamentably failed to recognize was that
anything may be forgiven to enthusiasm.
Browne's enthusiasm improved the teaching
of certain Oriental languages at Cambridge
out of all recognition. He had a charac¬
teristic fling, it is true, in the Introduction
to his book at established methods of
teaching Latin and Greek, yet the Intro¬
duction was pronounced by that fine classical
scholar, the late R. A. Neil, who had no
quarrel with tradition, to be one of the
most fascinating things he had ever read.
42
A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
" It carried me along at a gallop," Neil
said to me. " I had the feeling of being
engaged in a glorious adventure. A man
who makes learning exciting deserves to go
straight to Heaven."
The reviewer might have defended gerund-
grinding as profitable intellectual discipline,
and he might fairly have called upon Browne
to rid his English of otiose words, but to
let Browne's foibles (if they were such) and
his verbal excess blind him to the inimitable
qualities of the book—that was indeed an
almost incredible blindness. I am con¬
vinced that the chapters at the end of the
book about Browne's sojourn at Kirman
among the Kalandars make one of the
strangest and most informing collections of
travellers' impressions which have ever been
published. The book did not circulate
widely when it was first published, but it
will yet, I think, become popular, just as
Doughty's works were discovered after years
of neglect.
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR 43
A ceremony which gave Browne intense
pleasure, and was in its way the crown of
his career, appropriately took place at Pem¬
broke in 1920, when representatives of the
Persian nation came to give him presents
and to express publicly the affection, the
esteem, and the gratitude they felt towards
one who had interpreted Persia to English¬
men as she had never been interpreted before.
When Browne married Miss Alice Black-
burne-Daniell in 1906, he stepped from
happiness to greater happiness. He always
said that the omens were favourable because
his engagement had come about through
a Pembroke friendship. Living at Firwood,
a mile from Pembroke, he necessarily took
less part in the social life of the College.
The long evenings in his rooms were no
more. After all, few men can carry on
that game for many years without feeling
the effects, though these may be invisible
to the happy undergraduates who are the
beneficiaries.
44 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Browne's joy in his home, the perfect
understanding between him and his wife,
his pride in his sons, the pleasure he took
in a new kind of entertaining, were delight¬
ful to see. While his health was patently
failing in his latter years, Mrs. Browne
tended him with a profoundly wise appre¬
ciation of what work he must be allowed to
do for his peace of mind and what he must
be discouraged from doing for his health's
sake.
Her sudden death was a blow which he
had not the strength to bear. If she had
lived, he, too, would have lived for some
years longer. But the prop was taken
away, the stay was removed, the thread
that bound him to life was snapped. The
shock broke as loving and loyal a heart as
ever beat in any man, wise or foolish.
II
NOTE ON PERSIAN POETRY
By E. DENISON ROSS
T N making the following selections from
* the translations of Professor Edward
Granville Browne my aim has been to offer
such poems as would please the general
reader rather than to furnish examples of
all the styles of Persian poetry. It thus
comes about that many of this learned
scholar's finest renderings find no place in
this volume because their chief merit lies
in their technical achievement, which can
only be appreciated by students of the
Persian language.
The thirty-five poems thus selected have
been arranged under five groups, having
45
46 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
a view to their matter rather than to their
form. And to these I have added two
examples of prose translations from Arabic
originals which further exemplify E. G. B.'s
great felicity as a translator. The second
of these prose passages (No. 38) offers
an example of a peculiar literary device
known as " rhymed prose," of which the
earliest examples are to be found in the
Koran.
For the better understanding of these
poems, it may be fitting in this place to
offer for the benefit of the layman a few
observations on the rise and development of
Persian poetry and on the forms adopted
as its medium.
The first period, of which few monuments
remain, saw the full development of the
epic and lyric school of Persian poetry.
Then came the period of the Mystics,
who dominated Persian poetry for one
hundred and fifty years, and left an indelible
mark on all that came after.
NOTE ON PERSIAN POETRY 47
The early Sufi poets had taken the
current phraseology of the contemporary
singers of Love and Wine, and by impart¬
ing a mystic signification to the terms thus
adopted they had constructed a species of
symbolic language in which, for example,
the wine, the vintner and the tavern, the
Beloved and the Lover stand respectively
for mystic doctrine, the teacher, the place
of teaching, God and Man.
The Persian language has remained prac¬
tically unchanged for eight hundred years,
and it is impossible to assign a poem to a
period, still less to a poet, by its diction or
construction, whereas how easy it is in our
own language to say, for example, that
Chaucer is not a poet of the eighteenth
century.
In a.d. 642 the Persians suffered a crip¬
pling defeat at the hands of the Arabs at
the battle of Nahavand, and, with the fall
of Merv, in 651, the fate of the old
Zoroastrian State was decided. The over-
48 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
whelming progress of the arms of the Arabs
was only equalled by the rapid dissemination
of their creed and language. Wherever
the conquering Arab established himself,
there, too, came into practice his new
religion and his old language. In Persia,
with the suddenness of magic, Ormuzd and
Ahriman were changed for Allah and Satan,
and the Solar for the Lunar year. Such
was at any rate the case to all outward
appearance, and so long as the Caliphate
remained in the powerful hands of the
Umayyads, the language of Persia seems to
have relapsed into silence, and her national
spirit into obscurity. For a period of about
a hundred and fifty years we find no trace of
a national language, nor have we any means
of forming a precise notion of the language
spoken by the Persians of that time. As far
as documentary evidence is concerned, we
pass directly from the idiom of the " Fire-
worshipping Guebres " to the modern Per¬
sian, with its predominant element of Arabic
NOTE ON PERSIAN POETRY 49
words and expressions, an essentially Mu-
hammadan language.
So long as the central government in
Baghdad caused its authority to be felt
throughout the Eastern conquests of Islam,
which extended from the Persian Gulf to
the frontiers of Chinese Turkestan, the
language and culture of the Caliph held
sway in every province. It must, however,
be admitted that the court of Baghdad owed
more than half its brilliancy to the Persians
themselves ; it was conducted on lines
closely imitative of the late Sasanid court
at Ctesiphon, and though the Arabs, at the
period of their emigration from the deserts
of Arabia, possessed a rich and powerful
language, together with an innate sense of
poetry, they had but a small degree of
culture. Moreover, wherever the Arabs
carried their arms, they were on the look out
for men of genius and learning among the
conquered, and having found them would
send them to Baghdad to add lustre to
E
50 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
the literary circle gathered round the
Caliph ; and thus the very circumstances
which retarded the growth of a national
Persian literature were those which con¬
duced to the- intellectual brilliancy of the
Caliph's court.
In the middle of the eighth century
the Umayyads fell and gave way to the
House of Abbas, whose power in the
Eastern Provinces—never firmly established
—became weaker every year ; and thus,
at the beginning of the ninth century, we
meet with the rise of semi-independent
dynasties in East and Northern Persia.
The first poem composed in the modern
Persian language, which has come down to
us, is a short ode, by a certain Abbas, in
honour of the arrival in Merv, in 809, of
Ma'mun, the son of the famous Harun
al-Rashid. It is most probable, however,
that very little encouragement was given to
the development of the new language by
Governors who were anxious to keep in
NOTE ON PERSIAN POETRY 51
favour with the central authority. All the
business, even that in the outlying pro¬
vinces, was at this time conducted in Arabic,
and it is unlikely that during the first two
centuries of Islamic supremacy any other
language was taught in the schools of
Persia. In accepting Muhammadanism—
of which at least an outward profession
was enforced—the Persians found them¬
selves obliged to adopt into their spoken
language Arabic terminology, and to employ
in their writing the Arabic alphabet. In
adopting this latter, they, however, went
from bad to less bad ; for, unsuitable as
that alphabet is for conveying the sounds
of any other language, it was at least an
improvement on the Pahlavi alphabet it
superseded, which was limited, confused,
and in every sense unpractical.
Now, a learned Persian, even at a later
period, on whatever subject he might wish
to write, had three distinct incentives for
composing in Arabic : firstly, that language
52 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
being exceedingly difficult, fame would
accrue to him for having mastered it ;
secondly, a knowledge of Arabic would imply
an intimate acquaintance with the Koran,
which, in its turn, was a guarantee of piety ;
thirdly, he would win favour in high
quarters. Such, doubtless, were among the
causes which led all the early Persian
" prosateurs " to write in Arabic ; and it is
a notable fact—and one often overlooked—
that many Persian authors, whose works
have been translated from Arabic into
European languages, have wrongly obtained
celebrity as Arabs. Avicenna (died 1037),
to quote one example out of many, was a
Persian bred and born, but as he wrote
exclusively in Arabic he is not always
regarded as such.
Let us now turn to Persian literature
proper. Though we hear incidentally of
one or two poets who wrote in Persian
during the first half of the tenth century,
it is not until we reach the establishment of
NOTE ON PERSIAN POETRY 53
the national Samanid dynasty in Central
Asia that we find any real development in
this direction. As the founder of this new
school we may take the blind poet Rudaki,
who died about 950 of our era. He and
his followers wrote, indeed, in Persian, but
their vocabulary was surcharged with Arabic
words and their style was in pure imitation
of Arabic poetry. The rulers of the national
dynasty, who were yearly becoming more
independent of the Caliph, naturally spared
no effort to encourage the growth of a
national literature.
Great as was the encouragement given
by Samanids to letters, the fame of their
court was cast into comparative shade by
the brilliancy of the court of Ghazna.
Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, the second of
his line, who reigned from 998—1030, was
not only a skilled general, but the greatest
early patron of Persian literature. He is
said to have assembled at his court no less
than four hundred poets, of whom one was
54 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
elected to the post of " King of the Poets,"
or Poet Laureate—an office that has con¬
tinued to exist at the court of Persia to the
present day.
The compositions of these poets consisted
mainly of occasional odes and panegyrics,
with here and there a lyric in praise of
some idealized beauty. They took as models
the two principal forms of poetical com¬
positions of the Arabs, namely, the Qasida
and the Ghazal. These two styles are
almost identical in form and in order of
rhyme, but while the former usually exceeds
twenty-five couplets, the latter seldom ex¬
ceeds twelve, and has this distinct char¬
acteristic, that the poet always introduces
his nom de plume into the last couplet.
With regard to the subject, the Qasida
corresponds to ode or elegy and the Ghazal
c'o our lyric. The metres are as strict as
those of our classical languages, while their
variety is far greater. In both the above-
mentioned forms the rhyme is on one and
NOTE ON PERSIAN POETRY 55
the same sound throughout each separate
poem, and it is essential that the two first
half-couplets should rhyme together, and
after that every second half-couplet. This
method of rhyme is well illustrated in the
poem of Minuchihrl beginning " O tents-
man, haste," No. 19 of this volume. Some¬
times these rhymes ran to over one hundred
verses.
When the Persians took to making
rhymes, they had at their disposal not only
any Arabic word they chose to import, but
the whole of their indigenous vocabulary.
There is no class of versifying which lends
itself so readily to ingenuity as a long poem
on one rhyme, though this fatal facility
often leads the Persian poet to run on long
after thought is winded. In any European
language such a performance would be
bound to lose in dignity, whereas in Islamic
poetry the wonder only grows, and dignity
is always preserved.
It was at the court of the great Sultan
56 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Mahmud, above mentioned, that Firdawsi
flourished, the Homer of Iran and author
of the great Persian National Epic, the
Shdhnama or Book of Kings. Without
being the actual founder of the epic
style in Persian, Firdawsi was one of the
earliest and by far the greatest of its ex¬
ponents. The poetical form adopted for
narrative verse in Persian is technically
known as " Masnavi " ; i.e. the double
(rhyme), so called because each half-couplet
rhymed, and unlike the Arabic Oasida and
Ghazal, the rhyme varied in every couplet.
Several examples of this style are to be
found in these selections, including those of
Firdawsi himself.
Now, the epic was essentially Persian in
origin and growth, and quite foreign to
Arabic poetry, as was also the Ruba'i,
which had its origin about the same period,
as the mouthpiece of a new school of
thought. Both these styles of composition
stand for a revolt against Arab domination,
NOTE ON PERSIAN POETRY 57
and it may be affirmed that Persia, though
quick to adopt the religion and language
of her conqueror, was equally quick to set
her own stamp upon the new religion, and
in thus readily acquiescing in the new order
of things which was imposed upon her,
allowed her national sentiments and instincts
to suffer far less damage than would have
been the case had she offered a protracted
outward opposition to Islam.
Firdawsi's great epic was a reaction in
favour of the old order, and one executed
under the very auspices of Muhammad-
anism. He took his materials from what
he could find of the old books of the
Zoroastrians, and putting into verse the
old legendary history of Iran, brought his
narrative down through historical times to
the defeat of the last Sasanian king at the
hands of the Arabs.
The two greatest writers of quatrains
were Abu Sa'id ibn Abi'l-Khayr and Omar-
Khayyam. Evidently out of respect for
58 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
FitzGerald's marvellous renderings of Omar,
E. G. B. never published any renderings
of his own. He did, however, translate
a number of quatrains by Omar's forerunner,
Abu Sa'id ibn Abi'l-Khayr, who died a few
years after Omar was born, and these have
been included in our selections. He was the
first to popularize the quatrain as a vehicle
of religious, mystic, and philosophic thought.
His quatrains, like his other writings, are
purely mystic, and the Wine and the
Beloved are always to be interpreted accord¬
ing to the Sufis. There is none of the
ribaldry of Omar, but without Abu Sa'id
there might never have been an Omar, and
without Omar there would have been no
FitzGerald. For it was undoubtedly the
free-thinker in Omar that attracted Fitz¬
Gerald (and shocked Cowell, his teacher),
and I do not think Abu Sa'id would have
inspired his genius.
The best definition I have yet met with of
the quatrain occurs, curiously enough, in a
NOTE ON PERSIAN POETRY 59
letter of Edward FitzGerald's, written long
before he embarked on the study of Persian,
and was actually intended to describe the
sonnet. In 1841 FitzGerald wrote :—
I certainly don't like sonnets. . . . What do
they seem fit for but to serve for little shapes in'which
a man may mould very mechanically any single
thought which comes into his head, which thought
is not lyrical enough in itself to exhale a more
lyrical measure.
In conclusion, a few words may be
said regarding Persian metres. Their
variety is infinite ; and while some make a
ready appeal to our Western ears, others
sound heavy and halting ; though to the
Persian themselves they are all equally
musical. In a number of the translations
here presented E. G. B. has attempted not
only to preserve the mono-rhyme of the
original, but also to copy the metre. He has
been amazingly successful in the case of the
poems of Qurrat ul-'Ayn. Let us take for
6o A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
example the first verse of No. 3, of which
one hemistich is in Arabic and the other
in Persian, a device employed by many
Persian poets.
Jazabatu shawqika aljamat bi salasil il-ghammi
wal-bala
Hama ashikan-i shikasta dil ki dihand (i) jan bi
rahi wala.
The Ruba'i metre, on the other hand, is
severe and Gregorian in its general effect.
It invariably begins with two long syllables,
and sometimes with three. For example,
the first quatrain of Abu Sa'id translated by
E. G. B. runs as follows in the original :—
Gar zanki hazar ka'ba abad kuni,
Bih zan nabuvad ki khatiri shad kuni
Gar banda kuni zi lutf azadira
Bihtar ki hazar banda azad kuni
Ill
LIST OF POETS REPRESENTED
Abu Sa'id ibn Abi'l-Khayr. Born a.d. 967 ;
died a.d. 1049.
Famous mystic poet, the originator of the
Ruba'i. No. 6, No. 14.
Amir Khusraw of Delhi. Born in India a.d.
1253 5 died A-D- I322.
The greatest of the Indo-Persian poets. No. 1.
AwhadI, Ruknu'd-Dln. Died a.d. I33g.
A Sufi poet whose chief work, the Jdm-i-Jam,
is an imitation of Sana' i's Hadiqatii l-Haqlqat.
No. 26.
Baba Tahir. Eleventh Century (?) a.d.
A writer of quatrains in the dialect of Hamadan.
No. 16.
DawarI of Shiraz. Nineteenth Century a.d.
No. 12.
Farrukhi, Abu'l-Hasan. Died a.d. 103^.
A panegyrist at the court of Sultan Mahmud
of Ghazna. No. 17.
6l
62 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Firdawsi. Born 935—6 ; died a.d. 1025.
Author of the Shahnama, the great national
epic of Persia ; the romance of Yusuf and
Zulaykha and a writer of lyrics. No. 18,
No. 27.
Hamid ud-Din of Balkh. Died a.d. 1164.
Wrote maqamat in imitation of the Arabic
works of HamadhanI and Hariri. No. 38.
Hatif of Ispahan. Died a.d. 178^.
Sufi poet, known chiefly for writing a class
of poem called tarjt-band. No. 8.
Ibn Khaldun. a.d. 1332- 1406.
The greatest historical thinker of Islam. He
wrote a lengthy general history with a famous
introductory volume. No. 36.
Ibn-i-Yamin. Died a.d. 136^.
A philosophical and mystical poet whose
extant works are collected under the title
Muqatta'at, or "Fragments." No. 9.
'Iraq!. Died a.d. 1289.
A Sufi poet and prose-writer,whose best-known
work is the Lama'at, a mystical treatise
inspired by the teachings of Ibnu'l-'Arabl.
No. 28.
Jam!, 'Abd ur-Rahman. a.d. 1414—92.
Great Persian mystical poet, whose versatility
is shown by the very wide range of subjects
LIST OF POETS REPRESENTED 63
treated in his many works, both prose and
verse. No. 11, No. 33, No. 34.
Mahmud, Sultan of Ghazna. a.d. 970-1030.
A great conqueror and champion of Islam,
who collected at his court many famous poets
and other writers. Among these were Fir-
dawsi and al-Biruni. No. 32.
Mas'ud bin Sa'd bin Salman, a.d. 1121.
Persian poet, especially noteworthy for his
Habsiyyat, written during a twelve years'
captivity. No. 2.
Minuchihri. Eleventh Century a.d.
A Persian panegyric poet at the court of
Mahmud of Ghazna and his successors.
No. 19.
Nasir-i-Khusraw. a.d. 1003-88.
Persian poet and traveller. He wrote an
account of his travels, or Safar-nama, a Ditvan
and other works. No. 29.
Nizam!. a.d. 1140-12o3.
Great Persian poet who wrote five masnawi
poems known as the Khamsa. Nos. 35 and 36.
Qabus ibn Washmgir. Reigned a.d. 976-1012.
Ziyarid prince of Tabaristan. A patron of
letters who himself wrote poems in both Arabic
and Persian. Al-BlrunI, Al-Tha'alibi, Avi-
cenna and others were encouraged by him.
No. 20, No. 30.
64 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
oasim ul-Anwar. a.d. 1356-1433.
A mystic poet whose chief works are a Diwan,
containing poems in Persian, Turkish, and a
Persian dialect, and two treatises which are
mainly in prose. No. 31.
Qurrat ul-'Ayn. Died a.d. 1852.
A Bab! heroine executed in 1852 in the
persecution which followed the attempted
assassination of Nasiru'd-Dln Shah by three
Babls. She was a distinguished poetess,
and the poem beginning " The thralls of
love" is said to have been recited extempore
by her on her way to her execution. Nos.
3 and 4.
Rudaki. Died a.d. 94°.
Said to be the first great poet of Muham-
madan Persia. Only a small proportion of
his very lengthv poetical works is now extant.
No. 5.
Rumi, Jalal ud-Dln. a.d. 1207-73.
The greatest Sufi poet of Persia. His chief
works are the Masnawi i Ma nawi and the
Divuan i Shams-i-Tabriz. No. 10.
Sa'di, Muslih ud-Din. Circa a.d. 1184-1291.
One of the greatest Persian poets. He wrote
the Gulistan, the Bustan, and many other
poetical works. No. 21.
LIST OF POETS REPRESENTED 65
Sana'i. Twelfth Century a.d.
A Persian poet who has left seven masnawi
poems, including the " Hadlqatii l-Haqiqat"
and a Dhuan. No. 13, No. 22.
'UnsurI. Died circa a.d. 1040.
The poet-laureate of Mahmud of Ghazna. He
wrote mainly panegyric verse. No. 23.
F
IV
POEMS
OCCASIONAL
No. i
AMIR KHUSRAW OF DELHI
A double radiance left my star this year :
Gone are my brother and my mother dear.
My two full moons have set and ceased to
shine
In one short week through this ill luck of
mine.
By double torture I am racked of Fate,
By double blow' doth Heaven me prostrate.
Double my mourning, double my despair ;
Alas that I this double grief must bear !
Two brands for one like me is't not a shame ?
One fire's enough to set the stack aflame.
67
68 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
One breast a double burden should not bear,
One head of headaches cannot hold a pair.
Beneath the dust my mother lieth dead ;
Is't strange if I cast dust upon my head ?
Where art thou, mother mine, in what
strange place ?
Canst thou not, mother, show me thy dear
face ?
From heart of earth come smiling forth once
more,
And take compassion on my weeping sore !
Where'er in days gone by thy feet did fall,
That place to me doth Paradise recall.
Thy being was the guardian of my soul,
The strong support which kept me safe and
whole.
Whene'er those lips of thine to speed were
stirred
Ever to my advantage was thy word.
To-day thy silence makes its dumb appeal,
And lo, my lips are closed as with a seal !
No. 2
MAS'OD-I SA'D-I SALMAN
Naught served the ends of statesmen save
that I,
A helpless exile, should in fetters lie,
Nor do they deem me safe within their cells,
Unless surrounded by ten sentinels ;
Which ten sit ever by the gates and walls,
And ever one unto his comrade calls :
" Ho there ! On guard ! This cunning
rogue is one
To fashion bridge and steps from shade and
sun ! "
Why, grant I stood arrayed for such a fight,
And suddenly sprang forth, attempting flight,
Could elephant or raging lion hope,
Thus cramped in prison-cage, with ten to
cope ?
Can I, bereft of weapons, take the field,
Or make of back and bosom bow and shield ?
eg
No. 3
QURRAT UL-'AYN
The thralls of yearning love constrain in the
bonds of pain and calamity
These broken-hearted lovers of thine to
yield their lives in their zeal for Thee.
Though with sword in hand my Darling stand
with intent to slay, though I sinless be,
If it pleases Him, this tyrant's whim, I am
well content with His tyranny.
As in sleep I lay at the dawn of day that
cruel Charmer came to me,
And in the grace of His form and face the
dawn of the morn I seemed to see.
The musk of Cathay might perfume gain from
the scent those fragrant tresses rain,
While His eyes demolish a faith in vain
attacked by the pagans of Tartary.
With you, who contemn both love and
wine for the hermit's cell and the
zealot's shrine,
OCCASIONAL
71
What can I do ? For our faith divine you
hold as a thing of infamy.
The tangled curls of thy darling's hair,
and thy saddle and steed are thine
only care ;
In thy heart the Infinite hath no share, nor
the thought of the poor man's poverty.
Sikandar's pomp and display be thine, the
Kalandar's habit and way be mine ;
That, if it please thee, I resign, while this,
though bad, is enough for me.
The country of " I " and " We " forsake ;
thy home in Annihilation make,
Since fearing not this step to take thou
shalt gain the highest felicity.
Note.—E. G. B., in explanation of this poem, writes :
By such terms as " the Beloved," " the Darling," " the
Friend," and the like, God (or in this case the Bab) is
intended; the "cruelty" and " tyranny " attributed to
Him are not regarded as reproaches, but rather as praise
of His " independence " ; Islam is the faith " demolished
by His eyes " though " in vain attacked by the pagans of
Tartary." Couplets 5 and 6 are addressed respectively
to the dry votaries of orthodox piety, and to such as care
only for the world and its pleasures.
No. 4
QURRAT UL-'AYN
The effulgence of thy face flashed forth and
the rays of thy visage arose on high ;
Then speak the word, " Am I not your
Lord ? " and " Thou art, Thou art ! "
we will all reply.
Thy trumpet-call "Am I not?" to greet,
how loud the drums of affliction beat !
At the gates of my heart there tramp the
feet and camp the hosts of calamity.
That fair moon's love is enough, I trow,
for me, for he laughed at the hail
of woe,
And triumphant cried, as he sunk below,
" The Martyr of Karbala am I !
When he heard my death-dirge drear, for
me he prepared, and arranged my gear
for me ;
OCCASIONAL
73
He advanced to mourn at my bier for me,
and o'er me wept right bitterly.
What harm if thou with the fire of amaze
shouldst set my Sinai-heart ablaze,
Which thou first mad'st fast in a hundred
ways but to shake and shatter so
ruthlessly ?
To convene the guests to his feast of love
all night from the angel host above
Peals forth this summons ineffable, " Hail-
sorrow-stricken fraternity ! "
Can a scale of the fish of amaze like thee
aspire to enquire of Being's Sea ?
Sit mute like Tahira, hearkening to the
monster of " No " and its ceaseless
sigh.1
i i.e.. " How can you, who are but as a scale on a fish
n the sea, speak fittingly of the Great Ocean as Being ?
Sit still then, as I do, and listen to the roar of the
Leviathan which continually cries 'There is no God but
" Tahira == Qurrat ul-'Ayn.
No. 5
RUDAKI
The Amir Nasr of Bukhara had long been campaigning
in a distant country, and the leaders of his weary
and home-sick army begged him to lead them back
to their beloved Oxus country. Their pleadings fell
on deaf ears, but when Rudaki recited the following
poem, the Amir jumped on his horse and set out in
all haste for his capital, not even waiting to put on
his boots.
The Ju-yi-Muliyan we call to mind,
We long for those dear friends long left
behind.
The sands of Oxus, toilsome though they be,
Beneath my feet were soft as silk to me.
Glad at the friends' return, the Oxus deep
Up to our girths in laughing waves shall leap.
Long live Bukhara ! Be thou of good cheer !
Joyous towards thee hasteth our Ami'r !
The Moon's the Prince, Bukhara is the sky !
O Sky, the Moon shall light thee by and by !
Bukhara is the mead, the Cypress is he ;
Receive at last, O Mead, thy Cypress-tree !
74
MYSTIC
No. 6
ABU SA'ID IBN ABI'L-KHAYR
(0
To gladden one poor heart of man is
more,
Be sure, than fanes a thousand to restore ;
And one free man by kindness to enslave
Is better than to free of slaves a score.
0)
O Thou whose Visage makes our world so
fair,
Whose union, night and day, is all man's
prayer,
Art kinder unto others ? Woe is me !
But woe to them if they my anguish
share !
75
76 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
(5)
In search of martyrdom the Ghazls go
To fight Faith's battles : do they then not
know
That martyred lovers higher rank, as slain
By hand of Friend, and not by hand of
Foe ?
(6)
Let no one of Thy boundless Grace despair ;
Thine own elect shall ever upward fare :
The mote, if once illumined by Thy Sun,
The brightness of a thousand suns shall
share.
(io)
Till Mosque and College fall 'neath Ruin's
ban,
And Doubt and Faith be interchanged in
man,
How can the Order of the Qalandars
Prevail, and raise up one true Musulman ?
MYSTIC
77
(*3)
Sir, blame me not if wine I drink, or spend
My life in striving Wine and Love to blend ;
When sober, I with rivals sit ; but when
Beside myself, I am beside the Friend.
(17)
Said I, " To whom belongs thy Beauty ! "
He
Replied, " Since I alone exist, to Me ;
Lover, Beloved, and Love am I in one,
Beauty, and Mirror, and the Eyes which
I > >
see !
(18)
I sought the Leech and told my inward Pain:
Said he, " From speech of all but Him
refrain ;
As for thy diet, Heart's-blood shall it be,
And from both Worlds thy thoughts shalt
thou restrain,"
78 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
09)
Those men who lavish on me titles fair
Know not my heart, nor what is hidden
there ;
But, if they once could turn me inside out,
They'd doom me to the Burning, that I'll
swear !
(20)
Thou bid'st me love, and midst Thy lovers
pine,
Of Sense and Reason strin'st this Heart of
x
mine ;
Devout and much revered was I, but now
Toper, and gad-about, and libertine.
(21)
That Moon in Beauty rich and Constancy,
Beauty's high Zenith is His least Degree ;
Gaze on His Sun-bright Face ; or, canst
thou not,
On those dark curls which bear it company.
MYSTIC
79
(27)
My countenance is blanched of Islam's hue ;
More honour to a Frankish dog is due !
So black with shame's my visage that
of me
Hell is ashamed, and Hell's despairing crew.
(28)
When me at length Thy Love's Embrace
shall claim
To glance at Paradise I'd deem it shame,
While to a Thee-less Heaven were I called,
Such Heaven and Hell to me would seem
the same.
(3°)
What time nor Stars nor Skies existent
were,
Nor Fire nor Water was, nor Earth,
nor Air,
Nor Form, nor Voice, nor Understanding, I
The Secrets of God's One-ness did declare.
8o A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
(32)
Brahmin, before that cheek rose-tinted
bow
Of fourteen-year-old beauty, for I vow
That, failing eyes God-seeing, to adore
Fire is more fit than to adore a cow !
(33)
O God, I crave Thy Grace for hapless
me !
For hapless me enough Thy Clemency !
Each some protector, some defender claims ;
But I, poor friendless I, have none but
Thee !
(38)
By whatsoever Path, blessed the Feet
Which seek Thee ; blessed He who strives
to meet
Thy Beauty ; blessed they who on it
gaze,
And blessed every tongue which Thee doth
MYSTIC
81
(54)
The Gnostic, who hath known the Mystery,
Is one with God, and from his Self-hood
free ;
Affirm God's Being and deny thine own :
This is the meaning of " no god but He ! "
(.ss)
Last night I passed in converse with the
Friend,
Who strove to break the vows which I
would mend :
The long Night passed : the Tale was
scarce begun :
Blame not the Night, the Tale hath ne'er
an end !
(61)
Since first I was, ne'er far from Thee I've
been ;
My lucky star hath served me well, I ween ;
Extinguished in Thine Essence, if extinct,
And if existent, by Thy Light I'm seen.
G
No. 7
ANONYMOUS
A PARAPHRASE
As you gaze on the heaving Ocean's foam
A myriad bubbles meet your eye ;
The raindrops fall from their heavenly
home
To ascend no more, it would seem, on high ;
But all shall return when their race is
run,
For their source is one, their source is
one !
Through glasses of every tint and hue
Fair and bright shine the rays of light ;
Some may be violet, and some be blue,
Some be orange, and some be white ;
But in essence and origin all are one,
For the source of all is the radiant
Sun !
82
MYSTIC
Beaker and flagon and bowl and jar,
Of earth or crystal, coarse or fine,
However the Potter may make or mar,
Still may serve to contain the Wine ;
Should we this one seek, or that one
shun,
When the Wine which lends them their
worth is one ?
No. 8
HATIF OF ISFAHAN
O heart and soul a sacrifice to Thee,
Before Thee all we have an off'ring free !
The heart, Sweetheart, we yield as service
meet ;
The soul, O soul, we give right cheerfully.
Scarce from Thy hands may we preserve
our hearts,
But at Thy feet surrender life with glee.
The way to Thee is fraught with perils dire,
And Thy love-sickness knows no remedy.
Eyes for Thy gestures, ears for Thy com¬
mands,
Servants with lives and hearts in hand
are we.
Wouldst Thou have peace ? Behold, our
hearts are here !
Wouldst Thou have war ? Our lives we
offer Thee !
84
MYSTIC
85
He is alone, beside Him there is none ;
No God there is but He, and He is
One !
From Thee, O Friend, I cannot break my
chain,
Though limb from limb they hew my trunk
amain
In truth, from us a hundred lives were meet ;
Half a sweet smile from Thee will ease our
pain !
O Father, cease to caution me of Love !
This headstrong son will never prudence
gain.
Rather 'twere meet they should admonish
those
Who 'gainst Thy love admonish me in vain.
Well do I know the way to Safety's street,
But what can I, who long in bonds have lain ?
He is alone, beside Him there is none ;
No God there is but He, and He is
One !
No. 9
IBN-I-YAMlN
From the void of Non-Existence to this
dwelling-house of clay
I came, and rose from stone to plant ; but
that hath passed away !
Thereafter, through the working of the
Spirit's toil and strife,
I gained, but soon abandoned, some lowly
form of life :
That too hath passed away !
In a human breast, no longer a mere
unheeding brute,
This tiny drop of Being to a pearl I did
transmute :
That too hath passed away !
At the Holy Temple next did I forgather
with the throng
Of Angels, compassed it about, and gazed
upon it long :
That too hath passed away !
86
MYSTIC
87
Forsaking Ibn-i-Yamin, and from this too
soaring free,
I abandoned all beside Him, so that naught
was left but He :
All else hath passed away !
No. IO
JALAL UD-DlN RtJMl
I died from mineral and plant became ;
Died from the plant, and took a sentient
frame ;
Died from the beast, and donned a human
dress ;
When by my dying did I e'er grow less ?
Another time from manhood I must die
To soar with angel-pinions through the sky.
'Midst Angels also I must lose my place,
Since " Everything shall perish save His
Face."
Let me be Naught ! The harp-strings tell
me plain
That " unto Him do we return again 1 "
No. 11
JAM!
The cycle of heaven now bids me indite
For example the tale of the frog and the
kite.
A kite, wont to prey on the birds of the air,
By the weakness of age was reduced to
despair.
For soaring its pinions no longer avail ;
For hunting the strength of its talons doth
fail.
From the depth of its soul bitter wailing
arose ;
An abode by the shore of a lakelet it chose.
Now when in that place it had dwelt for a
spell,
On a sudden a frog in its clutches there fell.
The miserable frog made a piteous appeal :
" To woe thou hast turned," it lamented,
" my weal !
89
90 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
0 haste not to seek my destruction," it
cried ;
" Turn the steed of intent from my murder
aside !
An unsavoury morsel I yield at the best,
Neither sweet to the palate nor good to
digest.
My body is nothing save ill-flavoured skin :
What eater of meat can find pleasure
therein ?
Unclose then thy beak, leave me free to
depart,
And tidings of gladness convey to my
heart !
Then by magic and spells evermore at thy
wish
1 will guide thee to toothsome and savoury
fish,
In the river's clear streamlets long nurtured
and bred,
And with various food-stuffs abundantly fed,
From the head to the tail flesh and fatness
alone,
MYSTIC
9i
With scarcely a skin and with hardly a
bone !
Their bellies like silver, their backs bright
of blee,
Their eyes like reflections of stars in the sea.
With silvery scales back and sides are alight
As with God's starry largesse the heavens
by night.
Far better, all persons of taste will agree,
Is a mouthful of such than a hundred of
me."
The kite, by an oath confirmation to seek,
Relaxed its control : the frog fell from its
beak ;
With one leap it returned to its watery lair,
And the kite once again was the slave of
despair.
Its seat in the dust of destruction it took,
Neither frog in its talons nor fish in its hook.
That kite disappointed is like unto me,
Whose soul has been turned from the path¬
way of glee.
92 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Composure has quitted my heart at the
thought
Of finding expression for thoughts so dis¬
traught.
In my hands, through my lack of good
fortune, I find
Neither graces of speech nor composure of
mind.
O cupbearer, come, pass the bowl, I entreat,
And like heaven, I pray thee, the cycle
repeat !
That wine I desire which to peace giveth
birth,
And frees us from all the defilements of
earth.
O minstrel, approach, that the listening lute
At the touch of thy fingers may cease to be
mute.
The heart of the heedless shall wake at its
cry,
And the message of angels descend from the
sky.
No. 12
MlRZA DA WAR I OF SHiRAZ
O Arab boy, God give you happy morn !
The morning wine-cup give, for here's the
dawn !
Give to the Pole one draught, and I'll be
sworn
'Twill cast you down the crown of Capricorn :
You Ursa makes its ransom, tender fawn,
When sphere-like round the wine-jar you
rotate.
Hast thou no wine ? Clasp close the wine¬
skin old,
Then Arab-wise o'er head thy mantle hold,
And, like the Arabs, skirt in girdle fold ;
Mantle and wine-skin clasp in hand-grips
bold,
By wine-stained robe be wine-skin's bounty
told ;
And from thy lodging seek the Tavern's gate.
93
No. 13
SANA'I
That heart which stands aloof from pain
and woe
No seal or signature of Love can show :
Thy Love, thy Love I chose, and as for
wealth,
If wealth be not my portion, be it so !
For wealth, I ween, pertaineth to the
World ;
Ne'er can the World and Love together go !
So long as Thou dost dwell within my heart
Ne'er can my heart become the thrall of Woe.
94
LYRIC
No. 14
ABU SA'ID IBN ABI'L-KHAYR
I ask thee, nay, command thee, when comes
my time to die,
To carve upon my tombstone, " Here doth
a lover lie."
That perchance some other lover, who
Passion's laws doth know,
May halt his feet at my grave, and greet
the lover who lies below.
95
No. 15
ANONYMOUS
A PARAPHRASE
I find no place where I to thee my passion
may declare,
Or, if I find the place, with thee I find my
rival there,
Or, if at length I find a place, and find thee
there alone,
In vain I seek myself, for self has melted
into air !
96
No. 16
BABA TAHIR
(0
Chi khush bi mihrabuni az du sar bl,
Ki yak-sar mihrabuni dard-i-sar bl !
Agar Majnun dil-i-shurida'i dasht,
Dil-i-Layla az un shurlda-tar bl !
How sweet is love on either side confessed !
One-sided love is ache of brain at best.
Though Majnun bore a heart distraught
with love,
Not less distraught the heart in Layla's
breast !
CO
Magar shir u palangl, ay dil, ay dil !
Ba-mu da'im bi-jangl, ay dil, ay dil !
Agar dastum futi, khunat vi-rlzhum :
Vi-vlnum ta chi rang!, ay dil, ay dil !
h 97
98 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Lion or leopard fierce thou surely art,
Ever at war with us, O heart, O heart !
If I can catch thee, I will spill thy blood,
And see of what strange hue thou art, O
heart !
(3)
Vi-shum, vashum, azin 'alam ba-dar shum !
Vi-shum, az Chin u Ma-chin dlr-tar shum !
Vi-shum, az Hajiyan-i-Haj bi-pursum
Ki " I dlrl bas-e', ya dlr-tar shum ? "
Out of this world I will arise, and fare
To China and beyond ; and when I'm there
I'll ask the Pilgrims of the Pilgrimage,
"Is here enough ? If not, direct me
where ! "
No. 17
FARRUKHl
Since the meadow hides its face in satin
shot with greens and blues,
And the mountains wrap their brows in
silken veils of seven hues,
Earth is teeming like the musk-pod with
aromas rich and rare,
Foliage bright as parrot's plumage doth the
graceful willow wear.
Yestere'en the midnight breezes brought
the tidings of the spring :
Welcome, O ye northern gales, for this
glad promise which ye bring !
Up its sleeve the wind, meseemeth, pounded
musk hath stored away,
While the garden fills its lap with shining
dolls, as though for play.
On the branches of syringa necklaces of
pearls we see,
Ruby ear-rings of Badakhshan sparkle on
the Judas-tree.
99
100 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Since the branches of the rose-bush carmine
cups and beakers bore
Human-like five-fingered hands reach down¬
wards from the sycamore.
Gardens all chameleon-coated, branches with
chameleon whorls,
Pearly-lustrous pools around us, clouds
above us raining pearls !
On the gleaming plain this coat of many
colours doth appear
Like a robe of honour granted in the court
of our Ami'r.
For our Prince's Camp of Branding stirreth
in these joyful days
So that all this age of ours in joyful wonder
stands agaze.
Green within the green you see, like skies
within the firmament ;
Like a fort within a fortress spreads the
army tent on tent.
Every tent contains a lover resting in his
sweetheart's arms,
Every patch of grass revealeth to a friend
a favourite's charms.
LYRIC
101
Harps are sounding 'midst the verdure,
minstrels sing their lays divine ;
Tents resound with clink of glasses as the
pages pour the wine.
Kisses, claspings from the lovers ; coy
reproaches from the fair ;
Wine-born slumbers for the sleepers, while
the minstrels wake the air.
Branding-fires, like suns ablaze, are kindled
at the spacious gate
Leading to the state-pavilion of our Prince
so fortunate.
Leap the flames like gleaming standards
draped with yellow-hued brocade,
Ilotter than a young man's temper, yellower
than gold assayed.
Branding tools like coral branches ruby-
tinted glow amain
In the fire, as in the ripe pomegranate glows
the crimson grain.
Rank on rank of active boys, whose watchful
eyes no slumber know ;
Steeds which still await the branding, rank
on rank and row on row.
102 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
On his horse, the river-forder, roams our
genial Prince afar,
Ready to his hand the lasso, like a young
Isfandiyar.
Like the locks of pretty children see it how
it curls and bends,
Yet be sure its hold is stronger than the
covenant of friends.
Bu'l-Muzaffar Shah the Just, surrounded by
a noble band,
King and conqueror of cities, brave defender
of the land.
Serpent-coiled in skilful hands fresh forms
his whirling noose doth take,
Like unto the rod of Moses metamorphosed
to a snake.
Whosoever hath been captured by that
noose and circling line,
On the face and flank and shoulder ever
bears the Royal Sign.
But, though on one side he brands, he
giveth also rich rewards,
Leads his poets with a bridle, binds his
guests as though with cords.
No. 18
FIRDAWSl
Were it mine to repose for one night on
thy bosom,
My head, thus exalted, would reach to the
skies ;
In Mercury's fingers the pen I would
shatter ;
The crown of the Sun I would grasp as
my prize.
O'er the ninth sphere of heaven my soul
would be flying
And Saturn's proud head 'neath my feet
would be lying,
Yet I'd pity poor lovers sore wounded and
dying,
Were thy beauty mine own, or thy lips, or
thine eyes.
103
No. 19
MINOCHIHRl
O tentsman, haste, and strike the tent, I
pray !
The caravan's already under way ;
The drummer sounds already the first drum ;
Their loads the drivers on the camels lay.
The evening-prayer is nigh, and lo ! to-night
The sun and moon opposed do stand at bay,
Save that the moon climbs upwards through
the sky,
While sinks the sun o'er Babel's mountains
grey,
Like to two scales of golden balance, when
One pan doth upwards and one downwards
weigh.
" O silver cypress ! Little did I think
To see so swiftly pass our trysting-day !
We are all heedless, but the moon and sun
Are heedful things, whose purposes ne'er
stray.
104
LYRIC
105
My darling, wend thee hence and weep no
more,
For fruitless are the hopes of lovers aye.
With parting Time is pregnant ; know ye not
Needs must the pregnant bring to birth one
day ? "
When thus my love beheld my state, her eyes
Rained tears like drops which fall when
lightnings play.
That she crushed pepper held within her hand
And cast it in her eyes thou wouldest say.
Drooping and trembling unto me she came
Like throat-cut bird, whose life-blood ebbs
away,
Around my neck like sword-belt flung her
arms,
And on my breast like belt depending lay.
" O cruel ! " cried she ; " by my soul I swear
My envious foes rejoice through thee this
day !
Wilt thou, what time the caravan returns,
Return therewith, or still in exile stay ?
Perfect I deemed thee once in all thy deeds,
But now in love imperfect, wel-a-way ! "
No. 20
QABUS IBN WASHMGlR
The things of this world from end to end
are the goal of desire and greed,
And I set before this heart of mine the
things which I most need,
But a score of things I have chosen out of
the world's unnumbered throng,
That in quest of these I my soul may please
and speed my life along.
Verse, and song, and minstrelsy, and wine
full-flavoured and sweet,
Backgammon, and chess, and the hunting-
ground, and the falcon and cheetah
fleet ;
Field, and ball, and audience-hall, and
battle, and banquet rare,
Horse, and arms, and generous hand, and
praise of my Lord and prayer.
No. 21
SA'DI
0 Fortune suffers me not to clasp my
sweetheart to my breast,
Nor lets me forget my exile long in a kiss
on her sweet lips pressed,
The noose wherewith she is wont to snare
her victims far and wide
1 will steal away, that so one day I may
lure her to my side.
Yet I shall not dare caress her hair with a
hand that is overbold,
For snared therein, like birds in a gin, are
the hearts of lovers untold.
A slave am I to that gracious form, which,
as I picture it,
Is clothed in grace with a measuring-rod,
as tailors a garment fit.
O cypress-tree, with silver limbs, this colour
and scent of thine
107
io8 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Have shamed the scent of the myrtle-plant
and the bloom of the eglantine.
Judge with thine eyes, and set thy foot in
the garden fair and free,
And tread the jasmine under thy foot, and
the flowers of the Judas-tree.
O joyous and gay is the New Year's Day,
and in Shiraz most of all ;
Even the stranger forgets his home, and
becomes its willing thrall.
O'er the garden's Egypt, Joseph-like, the
fair red rose is King,
And the Zephyr, e'en to the heart of the
town, doth the scent of his raiment
bring.
O wonder not if in time of Spring thou
dost rouse such jealousy,
That the cloud doth weep while the flowrets
smile, and all on account of thee !
If o'er the dead thy feet should tread, those
feet so fair and fleet,
No wonder it were if thou shouldst hear a
voice from his winding-sheet.
LYRIC
109
Distraction is banned from this our land in
the time of our lord the King,
Save that I am distracted with love of thee,
and men with the songs I sing.
No. 22
SANA'!
Darling, my heart I gave to thee—
Good-night ! I go.
Thou know'st my heartfelt sympathy—
Good-night ! I go.
Should I behold thee ne'er again
'Tis right, 'tis right ;
I clasp this Hour of Parting tight—
Good-night ! I go.
With raven tress and visage clear,
Enchantress dear,
Hast made my daylight dark and drear ;
Good-night ! I go.
O Light of Faith thy Face, thy hair
Like Doubt's Despair !
Both this and that yield torment rare—
Good-night ! I go.
Therefore 'twixt Fire and Water me
Thou thus dost see.
Lips parched and dry, tear-raining eye :
Good-night ! I go.
No. 23
'UNSURl
Why deem it shame a fair one's curls to
shear,
Why rise in wrath or sit in sorrow here ?
Rather rejoice, make merry, call for wine ;
When clipped the Cypress doth most trim
appear.
in
MORAL
No. 24
ANONYMOUS
The man of parts who after wisdom strives
Should have on earth at least a brace of
lives ;
In one experience he then might learn,
And in the next that same to profit turn !
112
No. 25
ANONYMOUS
If lordship lies within the lion's jaws,
Go, risk it, and from those dread portals
seize
Such straight-confronting death as men
desire,
Or riches, greatness, rank, and lasting ease.
113
No. 26
AWHADl OF MARAGHA
Many a Spring shall Autumn follow when
thou'rt passed away ;
Many an evening, many a morning, many a
night and day.
To the World thy heart incline not ; though
it seemeth fair ;
Deem it not a faithful friend who for its
friends doth care.
Thou to-day who like a scorpion everyone
dost sting,
Snakes shall be thy tomb's companions,
shame to thee shall bring.
Comfort some afflicted spirit ; that is worth
thy while ;
Else to vex thy fellow's spirits easy is and
vile.
Look not on earth's humble dwellers with
a glance so proud :
Knowing not what Knight is hidden 'midst
the dusty cloud.
114
No. 27
FIRDAWSl
Much toil did I suffer, much writing I
pondered,
Books writ in Arabian and Persian of old ;
For sixty-two years many arts did I study :
What gain do they bring me in glory or
gold ?
Save regret for the past and remorse for its
failings
Of the days of my youth every token hath
fled,
And I mourn for it now, with sore weepings
and wailings,
In the words Khusrawanf Bu Tahir hath
said :
" My youth as a vision of childhood in sooth
I remember : alas and alas for my youth ! "
115
No. 28
'IRAQI
Cups are those a-flashing with wine,
Or suns through the clouds a-gleaming ?
So clear is the wine and the glass so fine
That the two are one in seeming.
The glass is all and the wine is naught,
Or the glass is naught and the wine is all :
Since the air the rays of the sun hath caught
The light combines with night's dark pall,
For the night hath made a truce with the
day,
And thereby is ordered the world's array.
If thou know'st not which is day, which
night,
Or which is goblet and which is wine,
By wine and cup divine aright
The Water of Life and its secret sign :
Like night and day thou mayest e'en assume
Certain knowledge and doubt's dark gloom.
Il6
MORAL
117
If these comparisons clear not up
All these problems low and high,
Seek for the world-reflecting cup
That thou may'st see with reason's eye
That all that is, is He indeed,
Soul and loved one and heart and creed.
No. 29
NASIR-I-KHUSRAW
I
God's gracious Word in truth is an Ocean
of speech, I ween,
Teeming with gems and jewels, and pearls
of luminous sheen.
Bitter to outward seeming, like the Sea, is
the Scripture's page,
But precious as pearls of price is the Inward
Sense to the sage.
Down in the depths of the Ocean are gems
and pearls galore ;
Seek then a skilful diver, and bid farewell
to the shore.
Wherefore hath God bestowed in the depths
of the Ocean's brine
All these pearls of price, and jewels so rare
and fine ?
us
MORAL
119
Wherefore if not for the Prophet, who
made the Inward Sense
The portion of Wisdom's children, but the
Letter a Rock of Offence ?
A handful of salt-stained clay hath the Diver
offered to thee
Because in thine heart he beheld but envy
and enmity.
Strive from the Outward Form to the
Inward Sense to win
Like a man, nor rest content like an ass
with a senseless din.
•%: ^
Darius, for all his thousands of servants and
thanes, alone
Had to depart and abandon the chattels he
deemed his own.
For the world is a thievish game, from
which no man may save
Himself, be he Sultan or subject ; his
goods, be he master or slave,
120 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
That is the day when all men the guerdon
they've earned shall win ;
The just the fruits of his justice, the tyrant
his wage of sin.
In the sight of the Holy Martyrs, in the
midst of that fierce dismay,
Will I grasp the robe of Zahra on that
fearful Judgment Day,
And God, the Judge Almighty, shall avenge
to the full the woes
I have suffered so long at the hands of the
House of the Prophet's foes.
II
How can the Heavens rest on thee bestow,
When they themselves nor pause nor peace
may know ?
This world's the ladder to that world, O
Friend ;
To mount, thou needs must climb it to
the end.
MORAL
121
In these two roofs, one whirling and one
still,
Behold that Secret-knowing Power and
Skill ;
How, unconstrained, in one harmonious
whole
He blended Matter gross and subtle Soul ;
How He did poise this dark stupendous
Sphere
In Heaven's hollow dome of emerald clear.
What say'st thou ? " Endlessly recurring
day
And month at last shall wear that dome
away ! "
Nay, for He hath exempted from such wear
The circling Skv, the Water, and the Air.
The canvas of His Art are Time and Place ;
Hence Time is infinite, and boundless
Space.
Shouldst thou object, " Not thus the Scrip¬
tures tell,"
I answer that thou hast not conned them
well.
122 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
And o'er the Scriptures is a Guardian set
From whom both man and jinn must know¬
ledge get.
God and His Prophet thus desired ; but
No !
You " much prefer the views of So-and-So."
Thy meat in man begetteth human power ;
To dog-flesh turns the meat that dogs
devour.
Ill
Were the turns of the Wheel of Fortune
proportioned to worth alone
O'er the Vault of the Lunar Heaven would
have been my abode and throne.
But no ! For the worth of Wisdom is
lightly esteemed in sooth, .
By fickle Fate and Fortune, as my father
warned me in youth.
Yet knowledge is more than farms, and
estates, and rank, and gold ;
MORAL
123
Thus my dauntless spirit, whispering, me
consoled :
" With a heart more brightly illumined
than ever the Moon can be,
What were a throne of glory o'er the Sphere
of the Moon to thee ? "
To meet the foeman's falchion and Fate's
close-serried field
Enough for me are Wisdom and Faith as
defence and shield.
* * * * *
My mind with its meditations is a fair and
fruitful tree,
Which yieldeth its fruit and blossom of
knowledge and chastity.
Wouldst thou see me whole and completed ?
Then look, as beseems the wise,
At my essence and not my seeming, with
keen and discerning eyes.
This feeble frame regard not ; remember
rather that I
124 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Am the author of works which outnumber
and outshine the stars in the sky.
God, to whose name be glory ! me hath
exempted and freed
In this troubled life of transit from the
things that most men need.
I thank the Lord Almighty, who plainly for
me did trace
The way to Faith and Wisdom, and opened
the Door of Grace,
And who, in His boundless mercy, in this
world hath made me one
Whose love for the Holy Household is
clear as the noonday sun.
*****
O dark ignoble body, never on earth have
I seen
A fellow-lodger so hurtful as thee or a
mate so mean !
Once on a time my lover and friend I
accounted thee,
MORAL
125
And thou wast my chosen comrade in travel
by land and sea.
But fellest of foes I found thee, spreading
thy deadly snare
To entrap me, whilst I of thy scheming
was heedless and unaware.
Till finding me all unguarded, and free
from all fear of guile,
You strove to take me captive by treachery
base and vile.
And surely, but for the Mercy of God and
His Gracious Will,
Thy rascally schemes had wrought me a
great and enduring ill.
But not the sweetest nectar could tempt me
now, for I know
What to expect at the hands of so fierce
and deadly a foe.
Sleep, O senseless body, and food are thy
only care,
But to me than these is Wisdom better
beyond compare !
'Tis the life of a brute, say the sages, to
dream but of water and grass,
126 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
And shall I, who am dowered with reason,
live the life of a soulless ass ?
I will not dwell, O Body, with thee in this
World of Sense ;
To another abode God calls me, and bids
me arise from hence.
There are talent and virtue esteemed, not
food and sleep ;
Then enjoy thy food and slumber, and let
me my virtue keep !
Ere me from their earthly casings uncounted
spirits have fled,
And I, though long I linger, may be counted
already dead.
Through the lofty vault of Ether with the
wings of obedience I
One day shall soar to the heavens as the
skylark soars to the sky.
Fearful of God's Foreknowledge, quaking
at God's Decree,
Is the mass of my fellow-creatures, yet these
are as guides to me :
" Speak of the first as ' Reason,' call the
latter ' the Word ' "—
MORAL
127
Such was the explanation that I from a
wise man heard.
Being myself in essence a rational, logical
soul,
Why should I fear myself ? Shall the Part
be in fear of the Whole ?
O man who dost rest contented to claim
the Determinist's view,
Though you lack a brute's discernment,
must I lack discernment too ?
IV
Bear from me to Khurasan, Zephyr, a kindly
word,
To its scholars aid men of learning, not to
the witless herd,
And having faithfully carried the message
I bid thee bear,
Bring me news of their doings, and tell me
how they fare.
I, who was once as the cypress, now upon
Fortune's wheel
128 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Am broken and bent, you may tell them ;
for thus doth Fortune deal.
Let not her specious promise you to destruc¬
tion lure :
Ne'er was her covenant faithful ; ne'er was
her pact secure.
*****
Look at Khurasan only : she is crushed
and trodden still
By this one and then by that one, as corn
is crushed in the mill.
You boast of your Turkish rulers : remem¬
ber the power and sway
Of the Zawulf Sultan Mahmud were greater
far in their day.
The Royal House of Farfghtin before his
might did bow
And abandon the land of Juzjan ; but
where is Mahmud now ?
'Neath the hoofs of his Turkish squadrons
the glory of India lay,
MORAL
129
While his elephants proudly trampled the
deserts of far Cathay.
And ye, deceived and deluded, before his
throne did sing ;
" More than a thousand summers be the
life of our Lord and King !
Who, on his might relying, an anvil of steel
attacks,
Findeth the anvil crumble under his teeth
like wax ! "
The goal of the best was Zawul, as it seems,
but yesterday,
Whither they turned, as the faithful turn to
Mecca to pray.
Where is the power and empire of that
King who had deemed it meet
If the heavenly Sign of Cancer had served
as a stool for his feet ?
Alas ! Grim Death did sharpen against
him tooth and claw,
K
130 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
And his talons are fallen from him, and his
teeth devour no more !
*****
Be ever fearful of trouble when all seems
fair and clear,
For the easy is soon made grievous by the
swift-transforming sphere.
Forth will it drive, remorseless, when it
deemeth the time at hand,
The King from his Court and Castle, the
Lord from his house and land.
Ne'er was exemption granted, since the
Spheres began to run,
From the shadow of dark eclipses to the
radiant Moon and Sun.
Whate'er seems cheap and humble and low
of the things of earth,
Reckon it dear and precious, for Time shall
lend it worth.
Seek for the mean in all things, nor strive
to fulfil your gain,
MORAL
For the Moon when the full it reacheth is
already about to wane.
Though the heady wine of success should
all men drug and deceive,
Pass thou by and leave them, as the sober
the drunkards leave.
For the sake of the gaudy plumage which
the flying peacocks wear,
See how their death is compassed by many
a spring and snare !
"fa
Thy body to thee is a fetter, and the world
a prison-cell :
To reckon as home this prison and chains
do you deem it well ?
Thy soul is weak in wisdom, and naked of
works beside :
Seek for the strength of wisdom ; thy
nakedness strive to hide.
*****
132 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Thy words are the seed ; thy soul is the
farmer, the world thy field :
Let the farmer look to the sowing, that the
soil may abundance yield.
^
Yet dost thou not endeavour, now that the
Spring is here,
To garner a little loaflet for the Winter
which creepeth near.
The only use and profit which life for me
doth hold
Is to weave a metrical chaplet of coral and
pearls and gold !
V
Though the courts of earthly rulers have
shut their doors in my face,
Shall I grieve, while I still have access to
the Court of the Lord of Grace ?
MORAL
133
In truth I desire no longer to deal with the
mighty and proud,
Beneath whose burden of favour my back
would be bent and bowed.
^ ^
To con the Holy Scripture, to renounce, to
strive, to know—
These are the four companions who ever
beside me go.
The Eye, the Heart, and the Ear through
the long night-watches speak,
And with their counsels strengthen my body
so frail and weak.
" Guard me well, I pray thee, and prison
me close," saith the Eye,
" From gazing on things forbidden, and
the lust that comes thereby."
Close the road against me, and close it
well," saith the Ear,
" To every lying slander, to gossip and
spiteful sneer."
134 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
What saith the Heart within me ? " From
Passion's curse and ban
Keep me pure and unsullied, as befits an
upright man."
Then crieth the Voice of Reason, " To me
was the watch and ward
Over the Soul and Body given by God the
Lord.
Hold thou nor speech or commerce with
the armies of Hate and Lust,
For I am there to confront them, and to
fight them, if fight they must."
Against the commands of reason can I
rebel and revolt,
When I am preferred through Reason alone
to the senseless dolt ?
For the Fiend had caught and constrained
me to walk in his captives' train,
And 'twas Reason who came and saved me,
and gave me freedom again.
'Twas Reason who seized my halter and
forced me out of the road
Whereby the Fiend would have led me at
last to his own abode.
MORAL
135
Though this Cave of the World is truly a
tenement dark and dire,
If my " Friend of the Cave " be Reason,
what more can my heart desire ?
Deem not the World, O son, a thing to
hate and to flee,
For a hundred thousand blessings it hath
yielded even to me.
Therein is my walk and achievement, my
tongue and my gift of speech ;
It yields me a ground of action, and offers
me scope for each.
And ever it cried in warning, " I am hasten¬
ing fast away,
So clasp me close to your bosom, and
cherish me whilst you may ! "
Reason was ever my leader, leading me on
by the hand,
Till it made me famed for Wisdom through
the length and breadth of the land.
136 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Reason it was which gave me the Crown of
Faith, I say,
And Faith hath given me virtue, and
strength to endure and obey.
Since Faith at the Last Great Judgment
can make my reckoning light,
Shall I fear, if Faith require it, to lose my
life outright ?
So the World is now my quarry, and the
hunter who hunts am I,
Though I was once the Quarry, in the days
that are now gone by.
Though others it hunt and capture, I stand
from its dangers clear ;
My Soul is higher than Fortune : then
why should I Fortune fear ?
No. 30
OABOS IBN WASHMGIR
(From the Arabic)
Say to him who fain would taunt us with
vicissitudes of Fate,
" Warreth Fate or fighteth Fortune save
against the high and great ?
Seest thou not the putrid corpse which
Ocean to its surface flings,
While within its deep abysses lie the pearls
desired of Kings ? "
Though the hands of Fate attack us, though
her buffets us disarm,
Though her long-continued malice bring
upon us hurt and harm,
In the sky are constellations none can count,
yet of them all
On the Sun and Moon alone the dark
Eclipse's shadows fall !
■£37
No. 31
QASIM UL-ANWAR
A negro, lacking reason, faith and taste,
Whose life the demon Folly had laid waste,
Had in ajar some treacle set aside,
And by mischance a mouse fell in and died.
He seized the mouse and plucked it out
with speed—
That cursed mouse, whose death was caused
by greed.
Then to the Oadi' sped the unwilling wight,
Taking the mouse, and told of Fortune's
spite.
The Judge before the folk, refined and rude,
Condemned the treacle as unfit for food.
The luckless negro scouted this award,
Saying, "You make a great mistake, my
Lord !
I tasted it, and found it sweet and good ;
If sweet, it cannot be unfit for food.
138
MORAL
139
Had this my treacle bitter been, then sure
Unlawful had I held it and impure."
The mind perverted of this black accursed
Bitter and sweet confounded and reversed.
Sin seemeth sweet and service sour, alack !
To thee whose face is as a negro's black.
To passion's palate falsehood seemeth sweet ;
Bitter is truth to natures incomplete.
When men are sick and biliously inclined,
The taste of sugar alum calls to mind.
Sick for this world all hearts, both young
and old,
Jaundiced for love of silver and of gold.
O captive in the snare of worldly joys,
Perish not, mouse-like, for the sweet that
cloys !
Though bitter seems God's discipline to
thee,
This bitter drug is thy sure remedy.
This bitter drug will cause thine ill's sur¬
cease,
And give the patient healing, rest and peace.
No. 32
NARRATIVE
SULTAN MAHMOD OF GHAZNA
Through fear of my conquering sword, and
my mace which no fort can withstand,
As the body is thrall to the mind, so to me
was subjected the land.
Now enthroned in glory and power I'd
dwell amid gladness at home,
Now, stirred by ambition, in arms from
country to country I'd roam.
I deemed I was somebody great when
exulting to conquer I came,
But the prince and the peasant, alas ! in
their end, I have learned, are the same !
At hazard two mouldering skulls shouldst
thou take from the dust of the grave,
Canst pretend to distinguish the skull of
the king from the skull of the slave ?
140
NARRATIVE
141
With one gesture, one turn of the hand, a
thousand strong forts I laid low,
And oft with one prick of my spurs have I
scattered the ranks of the foe.
But now, when 'tis Death who attacks me,
what profits my skill with the sword ?
God only endureth unchanging ; dominion
belongs to the Lord !
No. 33
JAM!
A bard whose verse with magic charm was
filled,
Who in all arts of eulogy was skilled,
Did for some king a flag of honour raise,
And wrought a poem filled with arts of
praise.
Reason and Law the praise of Kings
approve ;
Kings are the shadow of the Lord above.
The shadow's praise doth to the wise accord
With praises rendered to the shadow's Lord.
A skilful rhapsodist the bard one day
Brought in his verse before the King to
lay.
Melodious verse melodious voice doth need
That so its beauty may increase indeed.
From end to end these praises of the King
Unto his ears the rhapsodist did bring.
42
NARRATIVE
A fine delivery is speech's need :
The Book God bids melodiously to read.
When to the end he had declaimed the
piece
And from reciting it at length did cease,
The poet strained his ears to hear the
pause
Swiftly curtailed by thunders of applause.
The man of talent travaileth with pain,
Hoping the critic's well-earned praise to
gain,
Yet no one breathed a word or showed a
sign
Of recognition of those verses fine,
Till one renowned for ignorance and pride,
Standing beyond the cultured circle, cried,
" God bless thee ! Well thou singest, well
dost string
Fair pearls of speech to please our Lord
the King ! "
The poet gazed on him with saddened
eye,
Covered his face, and sore began to cry.
144 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
" By this," he wailed, " my back is snapped
in twain :
The praise of this lewd fellow me hath
slain !
That King and beggar grudged my praises
due
My fortune's face with black did not
embrue,
But this fool-fellow's baseless ill-judged
praise
Hath changed to woe the pleasure of my
days ! "
In folly's garden every flower and fruit,
Though fair of branch and bud, is foul of
root.
" Verse which accordeth with the vulgar
mood
Is known to men of taste as weak and crude,
Like seeks for like ; this is the common
law ;
How can the ripe forgather with the raw ?
The crow repeats the crow's unlovely wail,
And scorns the warbling of the nightingale.
NARRATIVE
145
The owl to some forsaken nook doth cling,
Nor home desires in palace of the King.
He hath 110 eye to judge the worth of verse,
So from his praise I suffer shame and
worse !
L
No. 34
JAM1
One from a heathen temple took the road
And lodged as guest in Abraham's abode,
Who, seeing that his practice did accord
111 with true faith, dismissed him from his
board.
Beholding him a stranger to God's Grace,
The Fire-fane's smoke apparent in his face,
Bade him confess the Lord who doth bestow
Men's daily bread, or leave the board and
g°*
The aged man arose, and " Friend," quoth
he,
" Can Faith the vassal of the Belly be ? "
With lips athirst and mouth unfilled with
food
He turned away his face and took the road.
To Abraham a message from the skies
Came, saying, " O most fair in qualities !
146
NARRATIVE
*4 7
Although that stranger held an alien creed,
Food to forbid him was no righteous deed.
For more than threescore years and ten, in
fine,
He offered worship at a heathen shrine,
Yet ne'er did I his sustenance withhold,
Saying, ' Thy heart is dead to faith and
cold.'
What harm were it if from thine ample store
Some morsels thou shouldst give him less
or more ? "
Abraham called him back, and did accord
A place to him at his most bounteous board.
" This flood of grace," the aged man
inquired,
" After that first rebuff what thought in¬
spired ? "
He told the message which his act had
banned,
And told him too of that stern reprimand.
" To one," the old man said, " who thus
can take
To task his servant for a stranger's sake
148 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Can I endure a stranger to remain,
Or fail his love and friendship to attain ? "
Unto the Source of Good he then addressed
His homage, and his faith in God professed.
No. 35
NIZAM!
Bahram Gur had a favourite handmaiden named Fitna
(" Mischief") whom he used to take with him on
his hunting expeditions, where she would beguile
him, during the intervals of repose, with the strains
of the harp, in which she was skilled. One day
the King had displayed his prowess in the chase
and in archery to the utmost, expecting to win from
his favourite some expression of admiration and
wonder ; but—
The maiden, prompted by mere wantonness,
Refused her admiration to express.
The King was patient, till a wild ass broke
Forth from its lair, then thus to her he
spoke :
" My skill, O Tartar maid, thy narrow
eyes
Behold not, or beholding do despise.
My skill, which knoweth neither bound
nor end,
Entereth not thy narrow eyes, O friend 1
149
150 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Behold this beast, and bid my skill impale
What spot thou wilt between its head and
tail."
" Wouldst thou," said she, " thy skill to
me make clear ?
Then with one shaft transfix its hoof and
ear."
The King, when this hard test was offered
him,
Prepared to gratify her fancy's whim ;
Called for a cross-bow, and forthwith did lay
Within the groove thereof a ball of clay.
Straight to the quarry's ear the pellet shot,
Whereat the beast, to soothe the smarting
spot,
And to remove the clay, its foot on high
Did raise, whereon the King at once let fly
An arrow like a lightning-flash, which sped
Straight to the hoof, and nailed it to the
head.
Then to the maid of China said the King :
" Success is mine ! What think you of
this thing ? "
NARRATIVE
" For long," said she, " the King this art
hath wrought,
In tricks long practised to succeed is naught !
What man hath studied long, he does with
ease,
And solves the hardest problems, if he
please.
That thus my lord the quarry's hoof should
hit
Proves not so much his courage as his wit."
No. 36
NIZAMI OF GANJA
When Farhad heard this message, with a
groan
From the rock-gulley fell he like a stone.
So deep a sigh he heaved that thou wouldst
say
A spear had cleft into his heart its way.
" Alas, my labour ! "—thus his bitter cry—
" My guerdon still unwon, in grief I die !
Alas the wasted labour of my youth !
Alas the hope which vain hath proved in
truth !
I tunnelled mountain-walls : behold my
prize !
My labour's wasted : here the hardship lies !
I, like a fool, red rubies coveted ;
Lo, worthless pebbles fill my hands instead !
What fire is this that thus doth me con¬
sume ?
I5-
NARRATIVE
*53
What flood is this which hurls me to my
doom ?
The world is void of sun and moon for
me :
My garden lacks its box- and willow-tree.
For the last time my beacon-light hath
shone ;
Not Shirin, but the sun from me is gone !
The cruel sphere pities no much-tried
wight ;
On no poor luckless wretch doth grace
alight !
Alas for such a sun and such a moon,
Which black eclipse hath swallowed all too
soon !
Before the wolf may pass a hundred sheep,
But on the poor man's lamb 'tis sure to
leap.
O'er my sad heart the fowls and fishes
weep ;
For my life's stream doth into darkness
creep.
154 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
Why am I parted from my mistress dear ?
Now Shirin's gone, why should I tarry
here ?
Without her face should I desire to thrive
'Twould serve me right if I were boned
alive ! . . .
Felled to the dust, my cypress quick lies
dead :
Shall I remain to cast dust on my head ?
My smiling rose is fallen from the tree :
The garden is a prison now to me.
My bird of spring is from the meadow
flown,
I, like the thunder-cloud, will weep and
groan.
My world-enkindling lamp is quenched for
aye :
Shall not my day be turned to night
to-day ?
My lamp is out, and chilly strikes the
gale :
My moon is darkened and my sun is
NARRATIVE
155
Beyond Death's portals Shirin shall I greet,
So with one leap I hasten Death to meet !
Thus to the world his mournful tale he
cried,
For Shirin, kissed the ground, and kissing
died.
Note.—The above passage from Nizami's Khusraw
and Shirin describes the lamentations and death of
Farhad, when, at Khusraw's command, false tidings are
brought to him of Shirin's death at the time when he has
all but completed the task imposed on him of cutting
through a mountain, for the accomplishment of which
Shirin's hand was to be his recompense.
PROSE PASSAGES
No. 37
IBN KHALDUN
(From the Arabic)
Know that the Art of Discourse, whether
in verse or prose, lies only in words, not in
ideas ; for the latter are merely accessories,
while the former are the principal concern
(of the writer). So the artist who would
practise the faculty of Discourse in verse
and prose, exercises it in words only, by
storing his memory with models from the
speech of the Arabs, so that the use and
fluency thereof may increase on his tongue
until the faculty (of expressing himself) in
the language of Mudar becomes confirmed
in him, and he becomes freed from the
foreign idiom wherein he was educated
156
PROSE PASSAGES
157
amongst his people. So he should imagine
himself as one born and brought up amongst
the Arabs, learning their language by oral
prompting as the child learns it, until he
becomes, as it were, one of them in their
language. This is because, as we have
already said, language is a faculty (mani¬
fested) in speech and acquired by repetition
with the tongue until it be fully acquired.
Now the tongue and speech deal only with
words, while ideas belong to the mind.
And, again, ideas are common to all, and
are at the disposal of every understanding,
to employ as it will, needing (for such
employment) no art ; it is the construction
of speech to express them which needs art,
as we have said ; this consisting, as it
were, of moulds to contain the ideas. So,
just as the vessels wherein water is drawn
from the sea may be of gold, or silver, or
pottery, or glass, or earthenware, whilst
the water is in its essence one, in such
wise that the respective excellence (of each)
15B A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
varies according to the vessels filled with
water, according to the diversity of their
species, not according to any difference in
the water ; just so the excellence and
eloquence of language in its use differs
according to the different grades of speech
in which it is expressed, in respect of its
conformity with the objects (in view), while
the ideas are (in each case) invariable in
themselves. He, then, who is incapable of
framing a discourse and (shaping) its moulds
(i.e. its style) according to the requirements
of the faculty of speech, and who endeavours
to express his thought, but fails to# express
it well, is like the paralytic who, desiring
to rise up, cannot do so, for loss of the
power thereunto.
No. 38
HAMID UD-DIN ABH BAKR OF
BALKH
But when to the confines of that country
I at length drew near—and to those jour¬
neying from Balkh did lend my ear—far
otherwise did things appear.
Who news of absent friends doth seek to know,
Must needs hear tidings both of joy and woe.
Thus spake informants credible :—" Haste
thee not, for thy goal and aim—is no more
the same—as that of days which are past
—and a season which did not last :—
those fragrant breezes now are changed to
the desert's deadly gale—and that sugar-
sweetness is transformed to draughts of
lethal bale ;—of those sweet beds of basil
159
160 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
only thorns remain—and of those cups of
pleasure naught save an aching pain.—
What boots it to behold thy fair-faced
fere—in weeds of woe and garments dark
and drear—or to witness the spring-land
of thy mays—a prey to dispraise—withered
and sere ?
' Can these dumb remnants mark Umm Awfa's
home ?' "
Said I :—" What overlooker's evil eye did
light—on those fair gardens bright ?—
And what dread poisoned desert-blast—
of desolation drear hath past—to wreck
their order, and their beauty to the winds
to cast ? "
Then they, " O youth !—such evil change,
in sooth—awaking in us boundless grief
and ruth—too often hath accrued—from
Fortune rude—and fickle Fate's undreamed
vicissitude.—Heaven is harsh, I ween—
yet is not what is heard as what is
PROSE PASSAGES 161
seen.—Haste thee, and onwards go—that
thou may'st see and know ;—for to
attempt to picture the unseen—is vain, I
ween."
M
VI
INDEX OF FIRST LINES
PAGE
A bard whose verse with magic charm was filled . 142
Literary History of Persia, Vol. Ill, p. 520.
A double radiance left my star this year . . 67
Literary History of Persia, Vol. Ill, p. no.
A negro lacking reason, faith and taste . . . 138
Literary History of Persia, Vol. Ill, p. 483.
As you gaze 011 the heaving ocean's foam .. . 82
A Tear Amongst the Persians, p. 491. New
edition, p. 536.
But when to the confines of that country (Prose). 159
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 348.
Cups are those a-flashing with wine . . .116
Literary History of Persia, Vol. Ill, p. 110.
Darling, my heart I gave to thee . . . .110
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 322.
1 f>3
164 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
PAGE
From the void of non-existence to this dwelling-
house of clay 86
Literary History of Persia, Vol. Ill, p. 217.
God's gracious word in truth is an ocean of speech,
I ween 118
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 233.
How sweet is love on either side confessed ! . . 97
Literary History of Persia, Vol. I, p. 84.
I ask thee, nay, command thee, when comes my
time to die 9S
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 269.
I died from mineral and plant became . . . 88
Literary History of Persia, Vol. Ill, p. 218.
I find no place where I to thee my passion may
declare 9^
A Tear Amongst the Persians, p. 501. New
edition, 547.
If lordship lies within the lion's jaws . . • 113
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 14.
Know that the Art of Discourse (Prose) . . 156
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 86.
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 165
PAGE
Lion or leopard fierce thou surely art . . 98
Literary History of Persia, Vol. I, p. 84.
Many a Spring shall Autumn follow when thou'rt
passed away . . . . . .114
Literary History of Persia, Vol. Ill, p. 145.
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 147.
Much toil did I suffer, much writing I
pondered . . . . . .115
Naught served the ends of statesmen save that I. 69
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 324.
O Arab boy, God give you happy morn . . 93
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 42.
O Fortune suffers me not to clasp my sweetheart
to my breast 107
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 534.
O heart and soul a sacrifice to thee ... 84
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 40.
O tentsman, haste, and strike the tent, I pray ! .104
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 31.
166 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
PAGE
One from a heathen temple took the road . . 146
Literary History of Persia, Vol. Ill, p. 529.
Out of this world I will arise, and fare . . . 98
Literary History of Persia, Vol. I, p. 84.
Quatrains of Abu Sa'id ibn Abi'l-Khayr . . 75
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 264.
Say to him who fain would taunt us with vicissi¬
tudes of Fate . . ' . . . 137
Literary History of Persia, Vol. I, p. 470.
Since the meadow hides its face in satin shot with
greens and blues ..... 99
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 126.
That heart which stands aloof from pain and woe . 94
Literary History of Persia, Vol. IT, p. 322.
The cycle of heaven now bids me indite . . 89
Literary History of Persia, Vol. Ill, p. 539.
The effulgence of thy face flashed forth and the
rays of thy visage arose on high . . 72
A Traveller s Narrative, p. 315.
Materials for tki Study of the Babi Religion,
P- 35°-
INDEX OF FIRST LINES 167
PAGE
rhe Ju-yi-Muliyan we call to mind ... 74
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 15.
The maiden prompted by mere wantonness . . 149
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 410.
The man of parts who after wisdom strives . . 112
Literary History of Persia, Vol. I, p. 90.
The things of this world from end to end are the
goal of desire and greed . . .106
Literary History of Persia, Vol. I, p. 471.
The thralls of yearning love constrain in the bonds
of pain and calamity .... 70
A Tear Amongst the Persians, p. 490. New
edition, p. 535.
Through fear of my conquering sword, and my
mace which no fort can withstand . 14c
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 118.
Were it mine to repose for one night on thy
bosom . 103
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 147.
168 A PERSIAN ANTHOLOGY
PAGE
When Farhad heard this message, with a groan . 152
Literary History of Persia, Vol. II, p. 405.
Why deem it shame a fair one's curls to shear . in
Chahar Maqala, p. 38.
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