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Oriental Mysticism.—Leonard Woods.
The following passage is translated from a German version of the Dschauhar Odsat, a Persian poem of the thirteenth century, and is here offered as a specimen of the mystic writings of the East,—a single sprig brought to town from a distant and unfrequented garden. These writings are characterized by wildness of fancy, a philosophy extremely abstruse, and especially by a deep spiritual life. They prove, as will be seen in the lines which follow, that the human mind has strong religious instincts; which, however, unless guided by a higher wisdom, are liable to great perversion. —Extravagant as the conception of the passage here selected must appear to us, it has still its foundation in truth. That the ideas of infinite and divine things, which slumber in the mind, are often violently awakened by external objects, is what every one has experienced. Says a modern poet, in prospect of “clear, placid Leman,”
“It is a thingWhich warns me, by its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.”
And what is the story of Rudbari and Hassan, but an exhibition, a la mode orientale, of the same truth?
Strange hap befell a father and his son.
Rudbari was an old sea-faring man,
And loved the rough paths of the ocean;
And Hassan was his child,—a boy as bright,
As the keen moon, gleaming in the vault of night.
Rose-red his cheek, Narcissus-like his eye,
And his form might well with the slender cypress vie.
Godly Rudbari was, and just and true,
And Hassan pure as a drop of early dew.—
Now, because Rudbari loved this only child,
He was feign to take him o'er the waters wild.
Take the last leave with mingled tears and prayer.
The sailor calls, the fair breeze chides delay,
The sails are spread, and all are under way.
But when the ship, like a strong-shot arrow, flew,
And the well known shore was fading from the view,
Hassan spake, as he gazed upon the land,
Such mystic words as none could understand:—
“On this troubled wave in vain we seek for rest.
Who builds his house on the sea, or his palace on its breast?
Let me but reach yon fixed and steadfast shore,
And the bounding wave shall never tempt me more.”
Then Rudbari spake:—“And does my brave boy fear
The Ocean's face to see, and his thundering voice to hear?
To tell, in his native cot, of dangers past.”
Then Hassan said: “Think not thy brave boy fears
When he sees the Ocean's face, or his voice of thunder hears.
But on these waters I may not abide;
Hold me not back; I will not be denied.”
Rudbari now wept o'er his wildered child:
“What mean these looks, and words so strangely wild?
Dearer, my boy, to me than all the gain
That I've earned from the bounteous bosom of the main!
Nor heaven, nor earth, could yield one joy to me,
Could I not, Hassan, share that joy with thee.”
But Hassan soon, in his wandering words, betrayed
The cause of the mystic air that round him played:
“Soon as I saw these deep, wide waters roll,
A light from the Infinite broke in upon my soul!”
“Thy words, my child, but ill become thine age,
And would better suit the mouth of some star-gazing sage.”
“Thy words, my father, cannot turn away
Mine eye, now fixed on that supernal day.”
“Dost thou not, Hassan, lay these dreams aside,
I'll plunge thee headlong in this whelming tide.”
“Do this, Rudbari, only not in ire,
'Tis all I ask, and all I can desire.
For on the bosom of this rolling flood,
Slumbers an awful mystery of Good;
And he may solve it, who will self expunge,
And in the depths of boundless being plunge.’”
As the flying snow-flake melts on a summer heath.
A moment Rudbari stood, as fixedly bound
As the pearl is by the shell that clasps it round.
Then he followed his Hassan with a frantic leap,
And they slumber both on the bottom of the deep!
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