Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

These poems bear somewhat a vague title, because such only would accurately suit compositions derived in very different degrees from the sources thus indicated. Some are mere translations; others have been modelled anew, and only such portions used of the originals as were adapted to my purpose; of others it is only the imagery and thought which are Eastern, and these have been put together in new combinations; while of others it is the hint, and nothing more, which has been borrowed,—it may be from some prose source.

ALEXANDER AT THE GATES OF PARADISE.

A LEGEND FROM THE TALMUD.

See Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Fudenthum, vol. ii. p. 321, with whose judgment I cannot agree, for he has scarcely patience to finish this ‘narrische talmudische Fabel,’ as he styles it. It reappears, slightly modified, in the Persian tradition that Alexander, having conquered the world, determined to seek out the fountain of life and immortality. So in the Christian poems of the Middle Ages, he recognises at last the emptiness of all the glory which he has won, and is hardly turned from his purpose of going forth in search of the lost Paradise (Rosenkranz, Gesch. d. deutschen Poesie im Mittelalter, p. 367). Chamisso has treated the same legend, from whom I have derived several hints.

Fierce was the glare of Cashmere's middle day,
When Alexander for Hydaspes bent,
Through trackless wilds urged his impetuous way;

Yet in that wide and wasteful continent
A little vale he found, so calm, so sweet,
He there awhile to tarry was content.

A crystal stream was sparkling at his feet,
Whereof the Monarch, when his meal was done,
Drank a long draught, to slake his fever heat.

Again he drank, and yet again, as one
Who would have drained that fountain crystalline
Of all its waves, and left it dry anon:

For in his veins, ofttimes a-fire with wine,
And in his bosom, throne of sleepless pride,
The while he drank, went circling peace divine.

It seemed as though all evil passions died
Within him, slaked was every fire accurst;
So that in rapturous joy aloud he cried:

‘Oh! might I find where these pure waters first
Shoot sparkling from their living fountain-head,
Oh, there to quench my spirit's inmost thirst!

‘Sure, if we followed where these waters led,
We should at length some fairer region gain
Than yet has quaked beneath our iron tread,—

‘Some land that should in very truth contain
All that we dream of beautiful and bright,
And idly dreaming of, pursue in vain;

‘That land must stoop beneath our conquering might.
Companions dear, this toil remains alone,
To win that region of unmatched delight.

‘O faithful in a thousand labours known,
One toil remains, the noblest and the last;
Let us arise, and make that land our own.’

—Through realms of darkness, wildernesses vast,
All populous with sights and sounds of fear,
In heat and cold, by day and night, he past,

With trumpet clang, with banner and with spear;
Yearning to drink that river, where it sent
Its first pure waters forth, serene and clear;

Till boldest captains sank, their courage spent,
And dying cried—‘This stream all search defies’—
But never would he tarry nor relent,

Nor pitched his banners, till before his eyes
Rose high as heaven, in its secluded state,
The mighty verdant wall of Paradise.

And lo! that stream, which early still and late
He had tracked upward, issued bright and clear
From underneath the angel-guarded gate.

—‘And who art thou that hast adventured here,
Daring to startle this serene abode
With flash of mortal weapons, sword and spear?’

So the angelic sentinel of God,
Fire-flashing, to the bold invader cried,
Whose feet profane those holy precincts trod.

The son of Philip without dread replied,—
‘Is Alexander's fame unknown to thee,
Which the world knows—mine, who have victory tied

‘To my sword's hilt; and who, while stoop to me
All other lands, would win what rich or fair
This land contains, and hold it mine in fee?’

—‘Thou dost thyself proclaim that part or share
Thou hast not here. O man of blood and sin,
Go back—with those blood-stainëd hands despair

This place of love and holy peace to win:
This is the gate of righteousness, and they,
The righteous, only here may enter in.’

Around, before him, lightnings dart and play:
He undismayed—‘Of travail long and hard
At least some token let me bear away.’

—‘Lo! then this skull—which if thou wilt regard
And to my question seek the fit reply,
All thy long travail shall have full reward.

‘Once in yon hollow circle lodged an eye,
That was, like thine, for ever coveting,
Which worlds on worlds had failed to satisfy.

‘Now, while thou gazest on that ghastly ring,
From whence of old a greedy eye outspied,
Say what thing was it,—for there was a thing,—

‘Which filled at last and throughly satisfied
The eye that in that hollow cavern dwelt,
So that, “Enough, I have enough,” it cried.’

—Blank disappointment at the gift he felt,
And hardly taking, turned in scorn away;
Nor he the riddle of the angel spelt,

But cried unto his captains,—‘We delay,
And at these portals lose our time in vain,
By more than mortal terrors kept at bay:

‘Come—other lands as goodly spoils contain,
Come—all too long untouched the Indian gold,
The pearls and spice of Araby remain.

‘Come, and who will this riddle may unfold.’
Then stood before him, careless of his ire,
An Indian sage, who rendered answer bold—

‘Lord of the world, commanded to inquire
What was it that could satisfy an eye,
That organ of man's measureless desire—

‘By deed and word thou plainly dost reply,
That its desire can nothing tame or quell,
That it can never know sufficiency.

‘While thou enlargest thy desire as hell,
Filling thine hand, but filling not thy lust,
Thou dost proclaim man's eye insatiable:

‘Such answer from thy lips were only just.
Yet ’twas not so. One came at last, who threw
Into yon face a handful of vile dust,

‘Whereof a few small grains did fall into
And filled the vault and hollow of that eye,
When that which suffisance not ever knew
Before, was fain, “I have enough,” to cry.’

FROM THE PERSIAN.

Death ends well Life's undelight,
Yet Life shudders at Death's sight.

Life the dark hand sees, but not
What it brings, the clear cup bright.

So at sight of Love a heart
Fears that it must perish quite.

Only Self, the tyrant dark,
He must perish in Love's might—

That the heart may truly live,
Breathing free in Love's pure light.

CHIDHER'S WELL.

Of Chidher's Well, the Eastern λουτρον παλιγγενεσιας, Von Hammer, in the very interesting introduction to his History of Persian Poetry, gives this account: ‘Contemporary with Moses lived the Prophet Chiser, of whom some hold that he is the same with Elias, while others altogether distinguish them. He is one of the chief personages of Eastern mythology, the ever-ready helper of the oppressed, the Genius of spring, the deliverer in peril, the admonisher of princes, the avenger of unrighteousness, the guide through the wilderness of the world, and, finally, the ever-youthful guardian of the fountain of life. As such he revives the youth of men and beasts and plants, gives back lost beauty, and in spring arrays the dead earth with its fresh garments of green. His fountain bestows on whomsoever drinks it eternal beauty, youth, and wisdom. What wonder then that all mortals with burning desire seek it, though as yet not one, not even Alexander, the conqueror of the world, who, in quest of it, undertook an expedition into the land of darkness, has found it!’ Probably this, his journey through the land of darkness, is but a mythic form of his expedition through the Libyan desert to the temple of Jupiter Ammon.

[_]

FROM THE PERSIAN.

Thee have thousands sought in vain
Over land and barren main,

Chidher's Well,—of which men say,
That thou makest young again;

Fountain of eternal youth,
Washing free from every stain.

To thy waves the agëd moons
Aye betake them, when they wane;

And the suns their golden light,
While they bathe in thee, retain.

From this fountain drops are flung
Mingling with the vernal rain,

And the old earth decks itself
With its young attire again.

Thitherward the freckled trout
Up the water-courses strain;

And the timid wild gazelles
Seek it through the desert plain.

Great Iskander, mighty lord,
Sought that fountain, but in vain;

Through the land of darkness went
In its quest with fruitless pain,

When by wealth of conquered worlds
Did his thirst unslaked remain.

Many more with parchëd lip
Must lie down and dizzy brain,

And of this, a fountain sealed
Unto them, in death complain.

If its springs to thee are known,
Weary wanderer, tell me plain.

From beneath the throne of God
It must well, a lucid vein.

To its sources lead me, Lord,
That I do not thirst again;

And my lips not any more
Shall the earth's dark waters stain.

Alexander.

LIFE AND DEATH.

A PARABLE.

[_]

FROM THE PERSIAN.

There went a man through Syrian land,
Leading a Camel by the hand;
The beast, made wild by some alarm,
Began to threaten sudden harm,
So fiercely snorting, that the man
With all his speed escaping ran—
He ran, and saw a well that lay,
As chance would have it, by the way:
He heard the Camel snort so near,
As almost maddened him with fear,
And crawled into the well, and there
Fell not, but dangled in mid air;
For from a fissure in the stone
Which lined its sides, a bush had grown;
To this he clung with all his might,
From thence lamenting his sad plight:
He saw, what time he looked on high,
The beast's head perilously nigh,
Ready to drag him back again;
He looked into the bottom then,
And there a Dragon he espied,
Whose horrid jaws were yawning wide,
Agape to swallow him alive,
So soon as he should there arrive.

But as he hung two fears between,
A third by that poor wretch was seen.
For where the bush by which he clung
Had from the broken wall outsprung,
He saw two Mice precisely there,
One black, one white, a stealthy pair—
He saw the black one and the white,
How at the root by turns they bite,
They gnaw, they pull, they dig, and still
The earth that held its fibres spill,
Which as it rustling downward ran,
The Dragon to look up began,
Watching how soon the shrub and all
Its burden would together fall.

The man in anguish, fear, despair,
Beleaguered, threatened everywhere,
In state of miserable doubt,
In vain for safety gazed about.
But as he looked around him so,
A twig he spied, and on it grow
Ripe berries from their laden stalk;
Then his desire he could not balk;
When these did once his eye engage,
He saw no more the Camel's rage,
Nor Dragon in the underground,
Nor game the busy Mice had found.
The beast above might snort and blow,
The Dragon watch his prey below,
The Mice gnaw near him as they pleased—
The berries eagerly he seized;
They seemed to him right good to eat;
A dainty mouthful, welcome treat,

They brought him such a keen delight,
His danger was forgotten quite.

But who, you ask, is this vain man,
Who thus forget his terror can?
Then learn, O friend, that man art thou!
Listen, and I will tell thee how.
The Dragon in the well beneath,
That is the yawning gulf of death;
The Camel threatening overhead,
Is life's perplexity and dread.
'Tis thou who, life and death between,
Hangest on this world's sapling green;
And they who gnaw the root, the twain
Who thee with thy support would fain
Deliver unto death a prey,—
These names the Mice have, Night and Day.
From morn to evening gnaws the white,
And would the root unfasten quite:
From evening till the morn comes back
In deepest stillness gnaws the black;
And yet, in midst of these alarms,
The berry, Pleasure, has such charms,
That thou the Camel of life's woe,
That thou the Dragon death below,
That thou the two Mice, night and day,
And all forgettest, save the way
To get most berries in thy power,
And on the grave's steep side devour.

LOVE.

Love is it, Love divine, that hath an impulse lent
To man, and beast, and worm, and every element.

All riddles Love can solve, all mysteries unfold;
Ask what thou wilt, and Love the answer will present.

I asked the circling heavens why they so swiftly moved:
Round Love's eternal throne they ever wheeling went.

I asked the waves what made their murmurs never cease:
Shall we in Love's great hymn with silence be content?

I asked the bickering fire when it would climb no more:
When with the fire above in Love's communion blent.

Night asked I why she hung the world with darkness round:
To consecrate the world for Love a bridal tent.

I asked the westwind why it breathed so soft and warm:
All roses to unfold for Love the westwind meant.

I sought some issue from the labyrinth of Love;
And found my bliss was there to be for ever pent.

O soul, that until now has sullenly refused
Thy portion in Love's joy, O sullen heart, relent;

Oh! see Love's mighty dance, oh! hear Love's choral hymn;
Stand up—in dance and hymn to take thy part consent.

THE FALCON.

[_]

FROM THE PERSIAN.

High didst thou once in honour stand,
The falcon on a Monarch's hand:

Thine eye, unhooded and unseeled,
All depths of being pierced and scanned:

All worlds of space from end to end
Thy never-wearied pinion spanned.

O falcon of the higher heaven,
Entangled in an earthly band,

While all too eagerly thy prey
Pursuing in a lower land,

In hope abide;—thy Monarch yet
For thy release shall give command,

And bid thee to resume again
Thy place upon thy Monarch's hand.

THE BREAKER OF IDOLS.

Mahmoud, the great Mahomedan conqueror of India, reached, in his career of victory, Somnát, of which the gates have since become familiar to us—a temple of peculiar sanctity in the southern extremity of Guzerát. Having overcome all resistance, he entered the temple. ‘Facing the entrance was Somnát—an idol five yards high, of which two were buried in the ground. Mahmoud instantly ordered the image to be destroyed; when the Bramins of the temple threw themselves before him, and offered an enormous ransom if he would spare their deity. . . . . Mahmoud, after a moment's pause, declared that he would rather be remembered as the breaker than the seller of idols, and struck the image with his mace. His example was instantaneously followed, and the image, which was hollow, burst with the blows, and poured forth a quantity of diamonds and other jewels which amply repaid Mahmoud for the sacrifice of the ransom.’—Elphinstone, History of India, vol. i. p, 554. There is a later poem on the same subject by Lowell, Under the Willows, p. 135.

Lo! a hundred proud pagodas have the Moslem torches burned,
Lo! a thousand monstrous idols Mahmoud's zeal has overturned.

He from northern Ghuznee issuing, through the world this word doth bear,—
‘God is one; ye shall no other with the peerless One compare:’

Till in India's furthest corner he has reached the costliest shrine
Of the Brahmins, idol-tending—which they held the most divine.

Profits not the wild resistance; stands the victor at the gate,
With this hugest idol's ruin all his work to consummate.

Forth in long procession streaming came the suppliant priests to meet—
Came with ransom and with homage the resistless one to greet.

Ransom vast of gold they offer, pearls of price and jewels rare,
Purchase of their idol's safety, this their dearest will he spare.

And there wanted not who counselled, that he should his hand withhold,
Should that single image suffer, and accept the proffered gold.

But he rather,—‘God has raised me, not to make a shameful gain,
Trafficking in hideous idols, with a service false and vain;

But to count my work unfinished, till I sweep them from the world:
Stand, and see the thing ye sued for, by this hand to ruin hurled.’

High he reared his battle-axe, and heavily came down the blow:
Reeled the abominable image, broken, bursten, to and fro;

From its shattered side revealing pearls and diamonds, showers of gold;
More than all that proffered ransom, more than all a hundred fold.

—Thou too, Heaven's commissioned warrior to cast down each idol throne
In thy heart's profanëd temple, make this faithful deed thine own.

Still they plead and still they promise, wilt thou suffer them to stand,
They have pleasures, gifts and treasures, to enrich thee at command.

Heed not thou, but boldly strike them; let descend the faithful blow;
From their wreck and from their ruin first will thy true riches flow.

Thou shalt lose thy life, and find it; thou shalt boldly cast it forth;
And then back again receiving, know it in its endless worth.

FROM THE PERSIAN.

Happy name I you, my brethren, who not ever doomed to roam,
In the eternal Father's mansion from the first have dwelt at home.

Round the Father's throne for ever standing, in his countenance
Sunning you, you see the seven circling heavens around you dance.

Me He has cast out to exile, in a distant land to learn
How I should love Him, the Father, how for that true country yearn.

I lie here, a star of Heaven, fall'n upon this gloomy place,
Scarce remembering what bright courses I was once allowed to trace.

Still in dreams it comes upon me, that I once on wings did soar;
But or ere my flight commences, this my dream must all be o'er.

When the lark is climbing upward on the sunbeam, then I feel
Even as though my spirit also hidden pinions could reveal.

I a rose-bush to this lower soil of earth am fastly bound,
And with heavenly dew besprinkled, still am rooted to the ground.

Yet the life is struggling upward; striving still with all their might
Yearning buds their cups to open to the warmth and heavenly light.

From its stalk released, my flower soars not yet—a butterfly;
But meanwhile my fragrant incense evermore I breathe on high.

From this gloomy land of vapours, where the hurricanes surprise,
Lightning scorches, and hail lashes, and the thunder terrifies,

By my Gardener to his garden I shall once transplanted be,
There where I have been already written from eternity.

O my brothers blooming yonder, unto Him, the Ancient, pray,
That the hour of my transplanting He will not for long delay.

THE BANISHED KINGS.

See Rückert, Brahmanische Erzählungen, p. 5; on the model of whose poem, my own, without pretending to be an accurate translation, is closely formed. The apologue owns, I believe, a higher antiquity even than the beautiful Greek romance of the seventh or eighth century, Barlaam and Josaphat, often ascribed, though on no sufficient grounds, to John of Damascus; but, at any rate, it is one of the many exquisite apologues with which that work is adorned.

On a fair ship, borne swiftly o'er the deep,
A man was lying, wrapt in dreamless sleep;
When unawares upon a sunken rock
That vessel struck, and shattered with the shock.
But strange! the plank where lay the sleeper bore
Him, wrapt in deep sleep ever, to the shore:
It bore him safely through the foam and spray,
High up on land, where couched 'mid flowers he lay.
Sweet tones first woke him from his sleep, when round
His couch observant multitudes he found:
All hailed him then, and did before him bow,
And with one voice exclaimed,—‘Our King art thou.’
With jubilant applause they bore him on,
And set him wondering on a royal throne:
And some his limbs with royal robes arrayed,
And some before him duteous homage paid,
And some brought gifts, all rare and costly things,
Nature's and Art's profusest offerings:
Around him counsellors and servants prest,
All eager to accomplish his behest.
Wish unaccomplished of his soul was none;
The thing that he commanded, it was done.

Much he rejoiced, and he had well-nigh now
Forgotten whence he hither came, and how;
Until at eve, of homage weary grown,
He craved a season to be left alone.

Alone in hall magnificent he sate,
And mused upon the wonder of his fate;
When lo! an aged counsellor, a seer,
Before unnoticed, to the King drew near;
—‘And thee would I too gratulate, my son,
Who hast thy reign in happy hour begun:
Seen hast thou the beginning,—yet attend,
While I shall also show to thee the end.
That this new fortune do not blind thee quite,
Both sides regard, the darker with the bright:
Heed what so many who have reigned before,
Failing to heed, now rue for evermore.
Though sure thy state and strong thy throne appear,
King only art thou for a season here;
A time is fixed, albeit unknown to thee,
Which when it comes, thou banished hence shalt be
Round this fair spot, though hidden from the eye
By mist and vapour, many islands lie:
Bare are their coasts, and dreary and forlorn,
And unto them the banished kings are borne;
On each of these an exiled king doth mourn.
For when a new king comes, they bear away
The old, whom now no vassals more obey;
Stripped of his royalties and glories lent,
Unhonoured, unattended he is sent
Unto his dreary island-banishment;
While all who girt his throne with service true,
Now fall away from him, to serve the new.
What I have told thee, lay betimes to heart,
And ere thy rule is ended, take thy part,
That thou hereafter on thine isle forlorn
Do not thy vanished kingdom vainly mourn,
When nothing of its pomp to thee remains
On that bare shore, save only memory's pains.

‘Much, O my Prince! my words have thee distrest,
Thy head has sunk in sorrow on thy breast;
Yet idle sorrow helps not—I will show
A wiser way, which shall true help bestow.
This counsel take—to others given in vain,
While no belief from them my words might gain.
Know then, whilst thou art Monarch here, there stand
Helps for the future many at command;
Then, while thou canst, employ them to adorn
That island whither thou must once be borne.
Unbuilt and waste and barren now that strand,
There gush no fountains from the thirsty sand,
No groves of palm-trees have been planted there,
Nor plants of odorous scent perfume that air;
While all alike have shunned to contemplate
That they should ever change their flattering state.
But make thou there provision of delight,
Till that which now so threatens, may invite;
Bid there thy servants build up royal towers,
And change its barren sands to leafy bowers;
Bid fountains there be hewn, and cause to bloom
Immortal amaranths, shedding rich perfume.
So when the world, which speaks thee now so fair
And flatters so, again shall strip thee bare,
And drive thee naked forth in harshest wise,
Thou joyfully wilt seek thy paradise.
There will not vex thee memories of the past,
While hope will heighten here the joys thou hast.
This do, while yet the power is in thine hand,
While thou hast helps so many at command.’

Then raised the Prince his head with courage new
And what the Sage advised, prepared to do.

He ruled his realm with meekness, and meanwhile
He marvellously decked the chosen isle;
Bade there his servants build up royal towers,
And change its barren sands to leafy bowers;
Bade fountains there be hewn, and caused to bloom
Immortal amaranths, shedding rich perfume.
And when he long enough had kept his throne,
To him sweet odours from that isle were blown;
Then knew he that its gardens blooming were,
And all the yearnings of his soul were there.
Grief was it not to him, but joy, when they
His crown and sceptre bade him quit one day;
When him his servants rudely did dismiss,
'Twas not the sentence of his ended bliss,
But pomp and power he cheerfully forsook,
And to his isle a willing journey took,
And found diviner pleasure on that shore,
Than all, his proudest state had known before.

SOLOMON.

What child of dust with glory was arrayed
Like Solomon?—his bidding, while he stood
In his obedience and first state of good,
The upper and the under worlds obeyed—
All spirits, good and evil; yea, he made
Hell's concourse and involuntary brood
Do drudging work for him—hew stones, bring wood,
And in the rearing of God's temple aid.
But when he fell from God, that self-same hour
They fell from him—against him dared to turn,
Defied his might, his ring, his seal of power;
Made him the subject of their mock and scorn;
While before them he now must crouch and cower,
Of strength and wisdom, as of goodness, shorn.

THE BALLADS OF HAROUN AL RASCHID.

I
THE SPILT PEARLS.

His courtiers of the Caliph crave—
‘Oh, say how this may be,
That of thy salves this Ethiop slave
Is best beloved by thee?

‘For he is hideous as the night:
But when has ever chose
A nightingale for his delight
A hueless scentless rose?’

The Caliph then—‘No features fair,
Nor comely mien are his:
Love is the beauty he doth wear,
And Love his glory is.

‘Once when a camel of my train
There fell in narrow street,
From broken casket rolled amain
Rich pearls before my feet.

‘I beckoning to my slaves, that I
Would freely give them these,
At once upon the spoil they fly,
The costly boon to seize.

One only at my side remained—
Beside this Ethiop none:
He, moveless as the steed he reined,
Behind me sat alone.

‘“What will thy gain, good fellow, be,
Thus lingering at my side?”
—“My King, that I shall faithfully
Have guarded thee,” he cried.

‘“True servant's title he may wear,
He only, who has not
For his lord's gifts, how rich soe'er,
His lord himself forgot!”’

—So thou alone dost walk before
Thy God with perfect aim,
From Him desiring nothing more
Beside Himself to claim.

For if thou not to Him aspire,
But to his gifts alone,
Not Love, but covetous desire,
Has brought thee to his throne.

While such thy prayer, it climbs above
In vain; the golden key
Of God's rich treasure-house of love
Thine own will never be.

II.
THE BARMECIDES.

See Sylvestre de Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabe, vol. ii.; and D'Herbelot, Bibliothèque Orientale, s.v. Barmekian.

Haroun the Just!—yet once that name
Of Just the ruler ill became,
By whose too hasty sentence died
The royal-hearted Barmecide.
O Barmecide, of hand and heart
So prompt, so forward to impart,
Of bounty so unchecked and free,
That once a poet sung, how he
Would fear thy very hand to touch,
Lest he should learn to give too much,
Lest, catching the contagion thence
Of thy unmatched munificence,
A beggar he should soon remain,
Helpless his bounty to restrain—
O Barmecide of royal heart,
My childhood's tears again will start
Into mine eyes, the tears I shed,
As I remember, when I read
Of harsh injustice done to thee,
And all thy princely family.
—What marvel that the Caliph, stung
With secret consciousness of wrong,
Or now desiring every trace
Of that large bounty to efface,
With penalty of death forbade
That mourning should for them be made;

100

That any should with grateful song
Their memory in men's hearts prolong?

—‘And who art thou, that day by day
Hast dared my mandate disobey?
Who art thou whom my guards have found,
Now standing on some grass-grown mound,
Now wandering 'mid the ruined towers,
Fall'n palaces, and wasted bowers
Of those at length for traitors known,
And by my justice overthrown—
Singing a plaintive dirge for them
Whom my just vengeance did condemn;
Till ever, as I learn, around
Thy steps a listening crowd is found,
Who still unto thy sad lament
Do with their sobs and tears consent;
While in the bosom of that throng
Rise thoughts that do their Monarch wrong?
What doom I did for this assign
Thou knewest, and that doom is thine.’

But then the offender:—‘Give me room,
And I will gladly take my doom,
O King, to spend my latest breath,
Ere I am borne unto my death,
In telling for what highest grace
I was beholden to that race,
Whose memory my heart hath kept,
Whose perished glories I have wept.
For then, at least, it will appear
That not in disobedience mere
Thy mandate high I overpast.
—O King, I was the least and last

101

Of all the servitors of him,
Whose glory in thy frown grew dim,—
The least and last—yet he one day
To me, his meanest slave, did say
That he was fain my guest to be,
And the next day would sup with me.
More time I willingly had craved,
But my excuses all he waved,
And by no train accompanied,
His two sons only at his side,
At my poor lodging lighted down,
Which at the limits of the town
Stood in a close and narrow street.
Him I and mine did humbly greet,
Standing before him while he shared
What we meanwhile had best prepared
Of entertainment, though the best
Was poor and mean for such a guest.
But supper done, with cheerful mien,
‘Thy house,’ he cried, ‘I have not seen,
Thy gardens;—let me pace awhile
Along some cool and shadowy aisle.’
I thought he mocked me, but replied,
‘Possessions have I not so wide:
For house, another room with this
Our only habitation is;
And garden have I none to show,
Unless that narrow court below,
Shut in with lofty walls, that name
In right of four dwarf shrubs may claim.’
—‘Nay, nay,’ he answered, ‘there is more,
If only we could find the door.’
Again I told him, but in vain,
That he had seen my whole domain.

102

—‘Nay, go then quick, a mason call.’
Him bade he straightway pierce the wall.
—‘But shall we in this wise invade
A neighbour's house?’—No heed he paid,
And I stood dumb, and wondering
Whereto he would the issue bring.
Anon he through the opening past,
He and his sons, and I the last;
When suddenly myself I found
In ample space of garden ground,
Or rather in a Paradise
Of rare and wonderful device,
With stately walks and alleys wide,
Far stretching upon every side;
And streams upon whose either bank
Stood lofty platanes, rank by rank,
And marble fountains, scattering high
Illumined dew-drops in the sky;
And making a low tinkling sound,
As sliding down from mound to mound,
They did at last their courses take
Down to a calm and lucid lake,
By which, on gently sloping height,
There stood a palace of delight;
And many slaves, but all of rare
And perfect beauty, marshalled there,
Did each to me incline the knee,
Exclaiming all—“Thy servants we.”

‘And then my lord cried laughing—“Nay,
When this is thine, how could'st thou say
That thou had'st shown me all before?
Thine is it all.”—He said no more,

103

But at my benefactor's feet
I falling, thanks would render meet.
He, scarcely listening, turned his head,
And to his eldest son he said:
“This house, these gardens, 'twere in vain,
Unless enabled to maintain,
That he should call them his;—my son,
Let us not leave this grace half done.”
Who then replied—“My farms beyond
The Tigris I by sealëd bond
This night before we part, will see
Made over unto him in fee.”
—“'Tis well; but there will months ensue,
Ere his incomings will be due.
What shall there, the meanwhile, be done?”
He turned unto his younger son,
Who answered—“I will bid that gold,
Ten thousand pieces, shall be told
Unto his steward presently;
These shall his urgent needs supply.”
'Twas done upon that very eve;
And done, anon they took their leave,
And left me free to contemplate
The wonders of my novel state.

‘Prince of the Faithful, mighty King,
My fortunes from this source had spring,
Which, if they since that time have grown,
Him their first author still they own.
Nor when that name, which was the praise
Of all the world, on evil days
Had fall'n, was I content to let
Be quite forgotten the large debt

104

I owed to him;—content to die,
If such shall be thy pleasure high,
And my offence shall seem to thee
Deserving of such penalty.’

What marvel that the King who heard
Was in his inmost bosom stirred?
What marvel that he owned the force
Of late regret and vain remorse?
That spreading palm, whose boughs had made,
Far stretching, such an ample shade
For many a wanderer through life's waste,
He had hewn down in guilty haste;
That fountain free, that springing well
Of goodness inexhaustible,
His hand had stopped it, ne'er again
To slake the thirst of weary men;
That genial sun, which evermore
Did on a cold chill world outpour
Its rays of love and life and light,
'Twas he who quenched in darkest night.
What marvel that he owned the force
Of late regret and vain remorse,
And (all he could) now freely gave
The life the other did not crave?
Nay more, the offender did dismiss
With gifts and praise; nor only this,
But did the unrighteous law reverse,
Which had forbidden to rehearse,
And in the minds of men prolong,
By grateful speech or plaintive song,
The bounteous acts and graces wide,
The goodness of the Barmecide.

105

III. THE FESTIVAL.

See Sylvestre de Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabe, vol. ii. p. 3.

Five hundred princely guests before
Haroun Al Raschid state:
Five hundred princely guests or more
Admired his royal state:

For never had that glory been
So royally displayed,
Nor ever such a gorgeous scene
Had eye of man surveyed.

He, most times meek of heart, yet now
Of spirit too elate,
Exclaimed—‘Before me Cæsars bow,
On me two empires wait.

‘Yet all our glories something lack,
We do our triumphs wrong,
Until to us reflected back
In mirrors clear of song.

‘Call him then, unto whom this power
Is given, this skill sublime—
Now win from us some splendid dower
With song that fits the time.’

106

—‘My King, as I behold thee now,
May I behold thee still,
While prostrate worlds before thee bow,
And wait upon thy will!

‘May evermore this clear pure heaven,
Whence every speck and stain
Of trouble far away is driven,
Above thy head remain!’

The Caliph cried—‘Thou wishest well;
There waits thee golden store
For this—but, oh! resume the spell,
I fain would listen more.’

—‘Drink thou life's sweetest goblet up,
O King, and may its wine,
For others' lips a mingled cup,
Be all unmixed for thine.

‘Live long—the shadow of no grief
Come ever near to thee:
As thou in height of place art chief,
So chief in gladness be.’

Haroun Al Raschid cried again—
‘I thank thee—but proceed,
And now take up a higher strain,
And win a higher meed.’

Around that high magnific hall
One glance the poet threw
On courtiers, king, and festival,
And did the strain renew:

107

—‘And yet, and yet—shalt thou at last
Lie stretched on bed of death:
Then, when thou drawest thick and fast
With sobs thy painful breath,

‘When Azrael glides through guarded gate,
Through hosts that camp around
Their lord in vain—and will not wait,
When thou art sadly bound

‘Unto thine house of dust alone,
O King, when thou must die,—
This pomp a shadow thou shalt own,
This glory all a lie.’

Then darkness on all faces hung,
And through the banquet went
Low sounds the murmuring guests among
Of angry discontent;

And him anon they fiercely urge—
‘What guerdon shall be thine?
What does it, this untimely dirge,
'Mid feasts, and flowers, and wine?

‘Our lord demanded in his mirth
A strain to heighten glee;
But, lo! at thine his tears come forth
In current swift and free.’

—‘Peace—not to him rebukes belong,
But rather highest grace;
He gave me what I asked, a song
To fit the time and place.’

108

All voices at that voice were stilled;
Again the Caliph cried,—
‘He saw our mouths with laughter filled,
He saw us drunk with pride;

‘And bade us know that every road,
By monarch trod or slave,
Thick set with thorns, with roses strewed,
Must issue in the grave.’

109

THE TALENTS.

[_]

IMITATED FROM THE PERSIAN.

Thou that in life's crowded city art arrived, thou know'st not how,
By what path or on what errand—list and learn thine errand now.

From the palace to the city on the business of thy King
Thou wert sent at early morning, to return at evening.

Dreamer waken, loiterer hasten; what thy task is, understand;
Thou art here to purchase substance, and the price is in thy hand.

Has the tumult of the market all thy sense confused and drowned?
Do its glistering wares entice thee? or its shouts and cries confound?

Oh! beware lest thy Lord's business be forgotten, while thy gaze
Is on every show and pageant which the giddy square displays.

Barter not his gold for pebbles; do not trade in vanities
—Pearls there are of price and jewels for the purchase of the wise.

110

And know this, at thy returning thou wilt surely find the King
With an open book before him, waiting to make reckoning.

Then large honours will the faithful earnest service of one day
Reap of him, but one day's folly largest penalties will pay.

111

THE EASTERN NARCISSUS.

In the attempt of the Neo-Platonists to put a new life into the old Grecian mythology, Narcissus falling in love with his own image in the water-brook was made the symbol of man casting himself forth into the world of shows and appearances, and expecting to find the good that would answer to his nature there, but indeed finding nothing but disappointment and death.—The fable is Feridoddin Attar's, who, born in 1216, perished in the invasion of Dschengischan. He was originally a rich merchant of spices. A pious dervisch entered his warehouse one day and craved an alms. Ferid bade him to be gone. The dervisch answered, ‘That can I do easily, for I possess nothing save my hood; but thou, with so many heavy sacks, how wilt thou contrive to be gone, when the hour of thy departure has arrived?’ These words made so deep an impression on Ferid, that, from that moment, he gave up his worldly strivings, and dedicated himself to the spiritual life.

Thou art the fox, O man, that, maugre all
His cunning, did into the water fall.
This fox was travelling once o'er hill and dell,
And reached at length the margin of a well;
His head he stooped into the well, when, lo!
Another fox did in the water show.
He winks, he nods—the other fox replies:
‘What, ho! we must be better friends,’ he cries;
And more acquaintance covetous to win,
Without a thought jumped Reynard headlong in.
He reached the bottom at a single bound,
But there no fox beside himself he found.
Upward again he now would gladly spring,
But to ascend was no such easy thing:
He splashes, struggles, and in sad voice cries,
‘Fool that I was! I deemed myself more wise.
Ah wretch! will no one come unto my aid?’—
But prayer and effort both were vainly made:
Soon did the water drag him down to death;
With a last cry he sank the waves beneath.

Thou art the fox of whom the fable tells;
This world of sense the devil's well of wells:
Thou saw'st reflected thine own image there,
And didst plunge headlong in without a care:
Oh happy! if thou struggle back to day,
Ere the strong whirlpool drags thee down for aye

112

THE SEASONS.

I.WINTER.

Pure ermine now the mountains wear,
And clothe with this their shoulders bare.

The dark pine wears the snow, as head
Of Ethiop doth white turban wear.

The floods are armed with silver shields,
Through which the Sun's sword cannot fare;

For he who once in mid heaven rode,
In golden arms, on golden chair,

Now through small corner of the sky
Creeps low, nor warms the foggy air.

To mutter 'twixt their teeth the streams,
In icy fetters, scarcely dare.

Hushed is the busy hum of life;
'Tis silence in the earth and air.

From mountains issues the gaunt wolf,
And from its forest depths the bear.

Where is the garden's beauty now?
The thorn is here; the rose, oh where?

113

The trees like giant skeletons,
Wave high their fleshless arms and bare;

Or stand like wrestlers stripped and bold,
And strongest winds to battle dare.

It seems a thing impossible
That earth her glories should repair;

That ever this bleak world again
Should bright and beauteous mantle wear,

Or sounds of life again be heard
In this dead earth and vacant air.

II.SPRING.

Who was it that so lately said,
All pulses in thine heart were dead,

Old Earth, that now in festal robes
Appearest, as a bride new wed?

O wrapt so late in winding-sheet,
Thy winding-sheet, oh! where is fled?

Lo! 'tis an emerald carpet now,
Where the young monarch, Spring, may tread.

He comes,—and, a defeated king,
Old Winter to the hills is fled.

The warm wind broke his frosty spear,
And loosed the helmet from his head;

114

And he weak showers of arrowy sleet
From his strongholds has vainly sped.

All that was sleeping is awake,
And all is living that was dead.

Who listens now, can hear the streams
Leap tinkling down their pebbly bed;

Or see them, from their fetters free,
Like silver snakes the meadows thread.

The joy, the life, the hope of earth,
They slept awhile, they were not dead:

Oh thou who say'st thy sere heart ne'er
With verdure can again be spread;

Oh thou who mournest them that sleep,
Low lying in an earthy bed;

Look out on this reviving world,
And be new hopes within thee bred.

III.SUMMER.

Now seems all nature to conspire,
As to dissolve the world in fire,

Which dies among its odorous sweets,
A Phœnix on its funeral pyre.

Simoom breathes hotly from the waste,
The green earth quits her green attire;

115

Floats o'er the plain the liquid heat,
Cheating the traveller's fond desire—

Illusion fair of lake and stream,
Receding as he draweth nigher.

Ice is more precious now than gold,
Snow more than silver men desire.

'Tis far to seek unfailing wells
For tender maid or aged sire;

Men know the worth of water now,
And learn to prize God's blessing higher;

The shallow pools have disappeared,
Caked into iron is the mire.

Through clouds of dust the crimson sun
Glares on the earth in lurid ire;

The parchëd earth with thirsty lips
Is gasping, ready to expire.

Oh happy, who by liquid streams
In shady gardens can retire,

Where murmuring falls and whispering trees
Sweet slumber to invite conspire;

Or where he may deceive the time
With volume sage, or pensive lyre.

116

IV.AUTUMN.

Thine, Autumn, is unwelcome lore—
To tell the world its pomp is o'er:

To whisper in the rose's ear,
That all her beauty is no more;

And bid her own the faith how vain,
That Spring to her so lately swore.

A queen deposed, she quits her state;
The nightingales her fall deplore:

The hundred-voicëd bird may woo
The thousand-leavëd flower no more.

The jasmine sinks its head in shame,
The sharp east wind its tresses shore;

And robbed in passing cruelly
The tulip of the crown it wore.

The lily's sword is broken now,
That was so bright and keen before;

And not a blast can blow, but strews
With leaf of gold the earth's dank floor.

The piping winds sing Nature's dirge,
As through the forest bleak they roar,

Whose leafy screen, like locks of eld,
Each day shows scantier than before.

117

Thou fadest as a flower, O man!
Of food for musing here is store.

O man! thou fallest as a leaf:
Pace thoughtfully earth's leaf-strewn floor;

Welcome the sadness of the time,
And lay to heart this natural lore.

118

[By Grecian annals it remained untold]

By Grecian annals it remained untold,
But may be read in Eastern legend old,
How when great Alexander died, he bade
That his two hands uncovered should be laid
Outside the bier—for men therewith to see
(Men who had seen him in his majesty,)
That he had gone the common way of all,
And nothing now his own in death might call;
Nor of the treasures of two empires aught
Within those empty hands unto the grave had brought.

119

MOSES AND JETHRO.

See Tholuck, Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystirk, p. 128.

When Moses once on Horeb's rocky steep,
A banished man, was keeping Jethro's sheep,
What time his flocks along the hills and dells
Made music with their bleatings and their bells,
He by the thoughts that stirred within him, drawn
Deep in the mountain, heard at early dawn
One who in prayer did all his soul outpour,
With strong heart-earnestness, but nothing more:
For strange his words were, savage and uncouth,
And little did he know in very sooth
Of that great Lord to whom his vows were made.
The other for a moment listening stayed,
Until—his patience altogether spent—
‘Good friend, for whom are these same noises meant?
For Him who dwells on high? this babbling vain,
Which vexes even a man's ear with pain?
Oh peace! this is not God to praise, but blame;
Unmannerly applause brings only shame:
Oh, stop thy mouth; thou dost but heap up sin,
Such prayer as this can no acceptance win,
But were enough to make God's blessings cease.’
Rebuked, the simple herdsman held his peace,
And only crying—‘Thou hast rent my heart,’
He fled into the desert far apart:
While with himself, and with his zeal content,
His steps the son of Amram homeward bent,
And ever to himself applauses lent—

120

Much wondering that he did not find the same
From his adopted sire, but rather blame,
Who having heard, replied—

‘Was this well done?
What wouldst thou have to answer, O my son,
If God should say in anger unto thee—
‘Why hast thou driven my worshipper from Me?
Why hast thou robbed Me of my dues of prayer?
Well pleasing offering in my sight they were,
And music in mine ears, if not in thine.’
He doth its bounds to every soul assign,
Its voice, its language—using which to tell
His praise, He counts that it doth praise Him well;
And when there is a knocking at Heav'n's gate,
And at Heav'n's threshold many suppliants wait,
Then simple Love will often enter in,
Where haughty Science may no entrance win.
That poor man's words were rougher husks than thine,
Which yet might hold a kernel more divine,
Rude vessel guarding a more precious wine.
All prayer is childlike; falls as short of Him
The wisdom of the wisest Seraphim,
As the child's small conceit of heavenly things;
A line to sound his depths no creature brings.
Before the Infinite, the One, the All,
Must every difference disappear and fall,
There is no wise nor simple, great nor small.
For Him the little clod of common earth
Has to the diamond no inferior worth;
Nor doth the Ocean, world-encompassing,
Unto his thought more sense of vastness bring
Than tiny dewdrop; atoms in his eye
A sun, and a sun-mote, dance equally:

121

Not that the great (here understand aright)
Is worthless as the little in his sight,
Rather the little precious as the great,
And, pondered in his scales, of equal weight:
So that herein lies comfort—not despair,
As though we were too little for his care.
God is so great, there can be nothing small
To Him—so loving He embraces all,—
So wise, the wisdom and simplicity
Of man for Him must on a level be:
But being this, more prompt to feel the wrong,
And to resent it with displeasure strong,
When from Him there is rudely, proudly turned
The meanest soul that loved Him, and that yearned
After his grace. Oh haste then and begone,
Rebuild the altar thou hast overthrown;
Replace the offering which on that did stand,
Till rudely scattered by thy hasty hand—
Removing, if thou canst, what made it rise
A faulty and imperfect sacrifice:
And henceforth, in this gloomy world and dark,
Prize every taper yielding faintest spark,
And if perchance it burn not clear and bright,
Trim, if thou canst, but do not quench it quite.’

122

GHAZEL.

What is the good man and the wise?
Ofttimes a pearl which none doth prize;

Or jewel rare, which men account
A common pebble, and despise.

Set forth upon the world's bazaar,
It mildly gleams, but no one buys;

Till it in anger Heaven withdraws
From the world's undiscerning eyes:

And in its shell the pearl again,
And in its mine the jewel lies.

123

PROVERBS.

TURKISH AND PERSIAN.

I

Sects seventy-two, men say, the world infest,
And each and all lie hidden in thy breast.

II

One staff of Moses, slight as it appears,
Will break in shivers Pharaoh's thousand spears.

III

Forget not death, O man! for thou may'st be
Of one thing certain,—he forgets not thee.

IV

The world's a tavern, where to-night men swill;
To-morrow brings the head-ache and the bill.

V

Speaks one of good which falls not to thy lot,
He also speaks of ill which thou hast not.

VI

Boast not thy service rendered to the King;
'Tis grace enough he lets thee service bring.

124

VII

Lies once thy cart in quagmire overthrown,
Thy path to thee by thousands will be shown.

VIII

Oh square thyself for use: a stone that may
Fit in the wall, is left not in the way.

IX

Never the game has happy issue won,
Which with the cotton has the fire begun.

X

The sandal tree, most sacred tree of all,
Perfumes the very axe which bids it fall.

XI

Dost thou the raven for a guide invite,
Count it not strange on carrion to alight.

XII

Each man has more of four things than he knows;
What four are these?—sins, debts, and years, and foes.

XIII

The king but with one apple has made free,
And straight his servants have cut down the tree.

XIV

Two friends will in a needle's eye repose,
But the whole world is narrow for two foes.

125

XV

Rejoice not when thine enemy doth die,
Thou hast not won immortal life thereby.

XVI

Be bold to bring forth fruit, though stick and stone
At the fruit-bearing trees are flung alone.

XVII

This world is like a carcass in the way:
Who eagerly throng round it, dogs are they.

XVIII

While in thy lips thy words thou dost confine,
Thou art their lord: once uttered, they are thine.

XIX

Oh seize the instant time; none ever will
With waters that have past impel the mill.

XX

Boldly thy bread upon the waters throw;
And if the fishes do not, God will know.

XXI

What will not time and toil?—by these a worm
Will into silk a mulberry leaf transform.

XXII

There is no ointment for the wolf's sore eyes,
Like clouds of dust which from the sheep arise.

126

XXIII

When what thou willest has befall'n not, still
This help remains, what has befall'n to will.

XXIV

Inquire not if thy soul be foul or fair,
But if tow'rd God its efforts striving are.

XXV

The lily with ten tongues can hold its peace;
Wilt thou with one from babbling never cease?

XXVI

How shall the praise of silence best be told?
To speak is silver, to hold peace is gold.

XXVII

Thy word unspoken thou canst any day
Speak, but thy spoken ne'er again unsay.

XXVIII

The world's great wheel in silence circles round,
A housewife's spindle with unceasing sound.

XXIX

O babbler, couldst thou but the cause divine,
Why one tongue only, but two ears are thine!

XXX

What mystic roses in thy breast will blow,
If on the wind their leaves thou straightway strow?

127

HARMOSAN.

See Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, c. 51.

Now the third and fatal conflict for the Persian throne was done,
And the Moslem's fiery valour had the crowning victory won.

Harmosan, the last and boldest the invader to defy,
Captive overborne by numbers, they were bringing forth to die.

Then exclaimed that noble captive—‘Lo! I perish in my thirst,
Give me but one drink of water, and let then arrive the worst.’

In his hand he took the goblet, but awhile the draught forbore,
Seeming doubtfully the purpose of the foemen to explore.

Well might then have paused the bravest, for around him angry foes
With a hedge of naked weapons did that lonely man enclose.

‘But what fear'st thou?’ cried the Caliph;—‘is it, friend, a secret blow?
Fear it not; our gallant Moslem no such treacherous dealing know.

128

‘Thou may'st quench thy thirst securely, for thou shalt not die before
Thou hast drunk that cup of water; this reprieve is thine—no more.’

Quick the Satrap dashed the goblet down to earth with ready hand,
And the liquid sank for ever, lost amid the burning sand.

‘Thou hast said that mine my life is, till the water of that cup
I have drained—then bid thy servants that spilt water gather up.’

For a moment stood the Caliph as by doubtful passions stirred;
Then exclaimed,—‘For ever sacred must remain a monarch's word.

‘Bring another cup, and straightway to the noble Persian give:
Drink, I said before, and perish; now I bid thee drink and live.’

129

GERTRUDE OF SAXONY.

I

A cloudy pillar before Israel went,
An Angel kept Tobias in the way,
A star led up the Magians to the tent,
Wherein new-born the Child of Glory lay:
Therefore the wayfarers will always say,
Praise be to him who guides his servants' feet,
Who keeps them that no evil may assay
To do them harm—when storm or hot rays beat,
A refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat.

II

On Saxon soil her journey had begun,
A gentle pilgrim on an holy quest,
Nor will she that long journey's end have won
Until Alsatian soil her feet have prest;
This maiden there would be a convent's guest,
Whereof the glory far and wide is told,
And there she would take up her lasting rest,
For there, while love of many has grown cold,
The earnest discipline of ancient times they hold.

III

And others in her company there were,
An aged kinsman—and, intent on gain,
Some merchants with them the same way did fare;
Till once when night o'ertook them in the plain,

130

No shelter won, the merchants then were fain
Re-seek their lodging lately left behind:
The holy pilgrims might not so restrain
Their eager steps, but trusted well to find,
Ere night was fully come, some shelter to their mind.

IV

But sooner than they looked for, thickest night
Fell—and they gazed around them, if perchance
The lowliest cottage might appear in sight,
For now return they could not, nor advance:
When of a sudden, on that plain's expanse,
A palace of surpassing beauty rare
Seemed to stand up before them at a glance.
Then gladly did they thitherward repair,
Hoping to find due rest and needful succour there.

V

And being there arrived, they marvelled much,
For doors and windows open wide they found,
And all without doors and within was such,
With such perfection of fresh beauty crowned,
As though in that day's space from out the ground
New-risen.—Entering in, they wondering saw
How all things for life's use did there abound,
But inmate none appearing, they for awe
And secret fear wellnigh were tempted to withdraw.

VI

But when they for a season waited had,
Behold! a Matron of majestic air,
Of regal port, in regal garments clad,
Entered alone—who, when they would declare,

131

With reverence meet, what need had brought them there
At such untimely hour, smiling replied,
That she already was of all aware;
And added, she was pleased and satisfied
That they to be her guests that night had turned aside.

VII

And ere the meal she spread for them was done,
Upon a sudden One there entered there,
Whose countenance with marvellous beauty shone,
More than the sons of men divinely fair,
And all whose presence did the likeness wear
Of Angel more than man:—he too, with bland
Mild words saluted them and gracious air;
Sweet comfort, solemn awe, went hand in hand,
While in his presence did those wondering pilgrims stand.

VIII

Then turning to that Matron, as a son
Might to a mother speak familiarly,
He spake to her—they only heard the tone,
Not listening, out of reverent courtesy:
And then with smile of large benignity
Saluting them again he left the place,
And was not more seen by them—only she,
That Matron, stayed and talked with them a space,
Whose words were full of sweetness and of heavenly grace.

IX

And then she showed them chambers for their rest,
And did not that tired maiden then forget
To take, and lead apart, her weary guest;
And pointing where a ready couch was set,

132

She with her own hands spread the coverlet
Above her, bidding her till morning rose
That she should render unto sleep his debt,
And suffer him her heavy lids to close;
Then, with a blessing given, she left them to repose.

X

The morning come, she bade them rise anon,
For now their fellow-travellers were in sight,
Journeying that way, and would be quickly gone—
The merchants whom they quitted yesternight;
Refreshed they rose to meet the early light,
And to rejoin their company prepared:
But first due thanks they tendered, as was right,
To her who had for them so amply cared:
And with those thankful hearts forth on their way they fared.

XI

So they set forward from that stately hall,
And now had journeyed for a little space,
When musing much and wondering much at all
Which had befall'n them there, they turned their face
Its fair proportions once again to trace—
When lo! with newer awe their hearts were filled,
For it had wholly vanished from its place,
Like some cloud-palace that the strong winds build,
Which to unmake again they presently have willed.

XII

While this new admiration them did seize,
They saw some nobles of the land that way
Come riding; straightway they inquired of these,
If they had never seen, nor yet heard say

133

Of some great dome that in that quarter lay;
But these to them made answer constantly,
How they had ridden past by night and day,
But that such stately hall might nowhere be,
Only the level plain, such as they now might see.

XIII

Thereat from them did thankful utterance break,
And with one voice they praised his tender care
Who had upreared a palace for their sake,
And of that pomp and cost did nothing spare,
Though but to guard them from one night's cold air—
And had no ministries of love disdained;
And 'twas their thought, if some have unaware
Angels for guests received with love unfeigned,
That they had been by more than Angels entertained.

134

LIFE THROUGH DEATH.

See Tholuck, Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik, p. 69.

I

A pagan king tormented fiercely all,
Who would not on his senseless idols call,
Nor worship them:—and him were brought before
A mother and her child, with many more.
The child, fast bound, was flung into the flame,
Her faith the mother did in fear disclaim:
But when she cried—‘O sweetest, live as I,’
He answered—‘Mother dear, I do not die;
Come, mother, bliss of heaven is here my gain,
Although I seem to you in fiery pain.
This fire serves only for your eyes to cheat,
Like Jesus' breath of balm 'tis cool and sweet.

The Mahomedans believe that in the breath of Christ lay the healing virtue, by which his miraculous cures were effected.

Come, learn what riches with our God are stored,
And how He feeds me at the angelic board.
Come, prove this fire; like water-floods it cools,
While your world's water burns like sulphur pools.
Come, Abraham's secret, when he found alone
Sweet roses in the furnace, here is known.

It is tradition alike Jewish and Mahomedan, that Abraham was flung into a furnace by Nimrod, for refusing to worship his false gods; where-upon the flames, instead of scorching and consuming, were turned for him into a bed of jasmine and roses.

Into a world of death thou barest me;
O mother, death, not life, I owed to thee.
Fair world I deemed it once of glorious pride,
Till in this furnace I was deified;
But now I know it for a dungeon-tomb,
Since God has brought me into larger room.
Oh! now at length I live: from my pure heaven
Each cloud, that stained it once, away is driven:

135

Come, mother, come, and with thee many bring;
Cry, “Here is spread the banquet of the King;”
Come, all ye faithful, come, and dare to prove
The bitter-sweet, the pain and bliss of love.’
So cried the child unto that crowd of men;
All hearts with fiery longings kindled then;
Towàrd the pile they headlong rushing came,
And soon their souls fed sweetly on the flame.

II

A dewdrop falling on the wild sea-wave,
Exclaimed in fear—‘I perish in this grave;’
But in a shell received, that drop of dew
Unto a pearl of marvellous beauty grew;
And, happy now, the grace did magnify
Which thrust it forth, as it had feared, to die;—
Until again, ‘I perish quite,’ it said,
Torn by rude diver from its ocean bed:
Oh unbelieving!—so it came to gleam,
Chief jewel in a monarch's diadem.

III

The seed must die, before the corn appears
Out of the ground, in blade and fruitful ears.
Low have those ears before the sickle lain,
Ere thou canst treasure up the golden grain.
The grain is crushed, before the bread is made;
And the bread broke, ere life to man conveyed.
Oh! be content to die, to be laid low,
And to be crushed, and to be broken so,
If thou upon God's table may'st be bread,
Life-giving food for souls an-hungerëd.

136

THE WORLD.

See Von Hammer, Geschichte der schönen Redekünste Persiens, p. 236.

‘O beauteous world, what features fair
Thine needs would show beyond compare,
If it were possible to find
Thy glories all in one combined!
Show me, O Lord, the world—the bright
Fair world reveal unto my sight.’

Such prayer the young man made, whose way
Soon after through the desert lay,
Where he far off a woman spied,
Wandering, by none accompanied.
‘Who art thou?’ he exclaimed.—“In me
See her whom thou hast longed to see.”
—‘What meanest thou?’ More plain reply
This time she made—“The World am I.”
—‘Then let me see thy countenance fair,
Whose beauty doth all hearts ensnare.’
She from her face the veil withdrew,
And straight the hidden was in view;
A visage painted all and bleared,
Where signs of all things foul appeared:
One bloody hand she raised on high,
Crooked was the other and awry.
‘How? what is this?’ he shuddering
Exclaimed—‘What mean'st thou, loathsome thing?’

137

“I with this bloody hand,” she said,
“Strike evermore my lovers dead:
That crookëd hand its shape has won
With beckoning new lovers on;
Those ever hurl I forth with might,
And these with sorceries I invite.
Myself must wonder, being so,
I never dearth of lovers know.”
—‘But tell me yet, how this may be,
That when such thousands wait on thee
Already, thou dost ever seek
More lovers still?’ She then did speak:
“Though these be many, never yet
A man among them have I met;
Who rightly bear of man the name,
My company avoid like shame;
And thus remain I desolate,
Even while on me such thousands wait.”

My brother, let her answer be
Deep graven on thy memory:
A man, my brother, wouldst thou prove,
Far keep thee from this beldame's love.

138

THE SUPPLIANT.

See Tholuck, Blüthensammlung aus der morgenländischen Mystik, p. 84.

All night the lonely suppliant prayed,
All night his earnest crying made;
Till standing by his side at morn,
The Tempter said in bitter scorn:
‘Oh! peace: what profit do you gain
From empty words and babbling vain?’
“Come, Lord—oh, come!” you cry alway;
You pour your heart out night and day;
Yet still no murmur of reply,—
No voice that answers, “Here am I.”’

Then sank that stricken heart in dust,
That word had withered all its trust:
No strength retained it now to pray,
For faith and hope had fled away:
And ill that mourner now had fared,
Thus by the Tempter's art ensnared,
But that at length beside his bed
His sorrowing Angel stood, and said,—
‘Doth it repent thee of thy love,
That never now is heard above
Thy prayer, that now not any more
It knocks at heay'n's gate as before?’

—“I am cast out—I find no place,
No hearing at the throne of grace:

139

‘Come, Lord—oh, come!’ I cry alway,
I pour my heart out night and day,
Yet never until now have won
The answer,—‘Here am I, my son.’”

—‘Oh, dull of heart! enclosed doth lie
In each “Come, Lord,” a “Here am I.”
Thy love, thy longing, are not thine,
Reflections of a love divine:
Thy very prayer to thee was given,
Itself a messenger from heaven.
Whom God rejects, they are not so;
Strong bands are round them in their woe;
Their hearts are bound with bands of brass,
That sigh or crying cannot pass.
All treasures did the Lord impart
To Pharaoh, save a contrite heart:
All other gifts unto his foes
He freely gives, nor grudging knows;
But love's sweet smart and costly pain
A treasure for his friends remain.’

140

THE MONK AND SINNER.

See the same, p. 251. All must be struck with the deep moral resemblance which this story of Sandi's bears to the incident recorded by St. Luke, vii. 36-40. We have here reproduced to us the Pharisee and the woman that was a sinner, and all the deeper relations of law and grace which belong to that history.

In days of old, when holy prophets trod
This earth, the living oracles of God,
What time one such his mission did fulfil,
There lived a youth, a prodigy of ill:
So foul the tablets of his heart and black,
That Satan's self from them had started back;
Him as the plague sought every soul to shun,
At him in horror pointed every one.
And in the city where this sinful youth
All bosoms filled with horror or with ruth,
In the same city dwelt a Monk as well,
Round whom all crowded when he left his cell;
And those who only touched his garment's hem,
Counted that heaven was nearer unto them—
Such name for prayer and penance he had gained:
And he one day that Prophet entertained:
When in their sight this sinner did appear,
Who yet for awe presumed not to draw near,
But falling back, like moth from dazzling light,
Lay on the ground, as blinded by their sight.
And as in spring relents the frozen ground,
Even so it seemed as though his heart unbound;
Streamed from his eyes like loosened floods the tears:
‘Woe's me,’ he cried; ‘for thirty guilty years
My life's best treasure have I spent in vain,
And death and hell are now my only gain.

141

I totter on a dark chasm's dreadful brink,
Hell's jaws are yawning for me, and I sink:
Yet since none ever Thou didst from Thee cast.
I stretch my hands to Thee; Lord, hold them fast.’

But here the Monk with lifted eyebrows—‘Peace,
Blasphemer,—from thy useless clamours cease:
And darest thou, thus steeped in sin, make free
With him, God's holy Prophet, and with me?
My God, this one thing grant me, that I may
Stand far from this man on the judgment day.’—
More he had said, but on the Prophet broke
Swift inspiration, and he straightway spoke:
‘Two here have prayed—diverse has been their prayer,
Yet granted both their supplications are.
He who in mire of sin now thirty years
Has rolled, forgiveness asks with many tears:
Ne'er yet has head of contrite sinner lain
Upon the threshold of God's throne in vain.
All he has sinned to him shall be forgiven;
Him God has chosen a denizen of heaven.
That Monk has prayed upon the other hand
That he may never near this sinner stand;
That this may be so, hell his place must be,
Where never more this sinner he shall see.
Whose robe is white, but heart is black with pride,
He for himself hell's gates has opened wide,
For, weighed in God the all-sufficient's scale,
Not claims nor righteousness of man avail;
But these are costly in his sight indeed,—
Repentance, contrite shame, and sense of need.’

142

THE GLOW-WORM.

What, thou askest, is the heaven, and the round earth and the sea,
And their dwellers, men and angels,—if with God compared they be?

Heaven and earth, and men and angels, all that anywhere is named,
Matched with Him, lose name and being, and to nothing shrink ashamed.

So 'tis seen when this world's Sultan in his glory forth doth ride,
Highest, lowest, beggars, Emirs, all alike their faces hide.

Its unnumbered billows rolling, great to thee the Ocean seems;
Great the Sun, from golden fountains pouring out a flood of beams:

Yet the faithful, God-enlightened, know another wonder-land,
Where the Ocean is a dew-drop, and the Sun a grain of sand.

In the forest's dark recesses hast thou marked the glow-worm's light,
In a green dell unbeholden, twinkling through the storm and night?

143

Once a pilgrim said—‘O gentle star, that shinest nightly, say
Wherefore thou appearest never in the bright and glorious day?’

Hear what then the gentle glow-worm answered from its mouth of fire,—
In the gloomy forest shine I, but before the sun expire.

144

THE CERTAINTIES OF FAITH.

Some children, of their lessons grown quite tired,
As well might be, a holiday desired.
‘Were but the master sometimes ill,’ they say,
‘We might perchance obtain such holiday;
But he is sturdier than a rock, and so
Our lessons never interruption know.
Oh, if we only could devise some trick,
By which we might persuade him he was sick!’
A roguish urchin then stood up and said,
‘Hear a device which comes into my head.
When school-time comes to-morrow, I will say,—
“What is it, master? are you well to-day?”
Then you, my brother, entering presently,
“Oh, master, what has happened to you?” cry.
Then all exclaim, “The master what can ail?
He looks so flushed, then presently so pale.”
You'll see a man will credit any stuff,
If only it is told him oft enough.’
The next day so they did; the first went in,
And did with serious face the game begin.
‘Dear master, you are very ill to-day.’
“Peace, fool,” he answered, “I am well, I say.”
Yet though the lie had not its end attained,
Some slight misgiving in his soul remained;
And when the next the same tale did repeat,
‘Oh, Sir, you look as in a fever heat,’

145

And third and fourth chimed in with them, at last
The error in his soul was rooted fast.
Snatching his cloak, he hurried home in fear;
“To-day at home your lessons I will hear.”
Entering his house he chid his wife, and said
She cared not if he were alive or dead.
Wrapt in a blanket on the bed he sate,
And crying oh! and ah! bemoaned his fate:
While the sad urchins, listening to his sighs,
With all his pains appeared to sympathize.
Yet since from toil they had not yet escaped,
Upon the nonce a new device they shaped:
No sooner one to say his task drew nigh,
And oped his mouth, than all the rest did cry,
‘Oh, not so loud; your shrieking, prithee, cease,
See how you make his fever to increase.’
“In truth, the fever rises higher still,”
The master answered—“I am very ill.
Go, children, go, and leave me here alone.”
They make their bows, and in a trice are gone:
Like birds, when one their cage doth open leave,
They darted forth, each laughing in his sleeve.

What thou of God and of thyself dost know,
So know that none can force thee to forego;
For ah! his knowledge is a worthless art,
Which forming of himself no vital part,
The foremost man he meets with readier skill
In sleight of words, can rob him of at will.
Faith feels not of her lore more sure nor less,
If all the world deny it or confess:
Did the whole world exclaim, ‘Like Solomon,
Thou sittest high on Wisdom's noblest throne,’

146

She would not, than before, be surer then,
Nor draw more courage from the assent of men.
Or did the whole world cry, ‘O fond and vain!
What idle dream is this which haunts thy brain?’
To the whole world Faith boldly would reply,
‘The whole world can, but I can never, lie.’

147

THE PANTHEIST;

THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.

See the same, p. 255, and his Ssufismus, pp. 133-145. The doctrine of evil, as not indeed evil, but only an inferior kind of good, to which the pantheist is of necessity driven, is wrought out with great skill and frequency by the Eastern Mystics—often comes out in their writings in its most offensive shapes. It is instructive to notice how completely they have anticipated this view, which continually reappears in the philosophical systems of our own day, and is in them brought forward as some mighty discovery, and a key to all the perplexities of the world.

One who in subtle questions took delight,
Came running to my lodging late one night,
And straight began:—‘Wilt thou affirm that sin
Had in man's will its root and origin,
When that will did itself from God proceed?
Whate'er then followed, He must have decreed.
If evil, then, be not against God's will,
'Tis wrongly named, it is not truly ill:
Rather the world a chess-board we should name,
And God both sides is playing of the game:
Moses and Pharaoh seem opposed, for they
Do thus God's greatness on two sides display;
They seem opposed, but at the root are one,
And each his part allotted has well done;
And that which men so blindly evil call,
And hate and fear, this evil, after all,
Is but as those discordant notes whereby
Well-skilled musicians heighten melody;—
But as the dark ground cunning painters lay,
To bring the bright hues into clearer day:
'Tis good as yet imperfect, incomplete;
Fruit that is sour, while passing on to sweet.’

Then I, who knew the world had travelled o'er
This line of thought a thousand times before,

148

Would all debate have willingly put by,
Yet with this tale at last must make reply:
‘The head of Seid his comrade struck one day;
Seid meant the blow in earnest to repay;
But then the striker—“Pardon, friend, the blow—
I am inquiring, and two things would know:
See, when my hand did on your head alight,
Straight various bruises there appeared in sight.
Now, prithee, give me a reply to this,
If head or hand their ultimate cause is?
And if you really do with them agree
Who but in pain a lesser pleasure see?”
Seid then—“O fool! my agony is great,
And think'st thou I can idly speculate?”
The same I say;—let him display his skill
On the world's woe, who does not feel its ill;
Let speculate the man who feels no pain,
To whom the world is all a pageant vain,
An empty show stretched out that he may sit,
And crying “Fie” or “Bravo!” show his wit.
Me the deep feeling of its mighty woe
Robs of all wish herein my skill to show;
I only know that evil is no dream,
A thing that is, and does not merely seem:
Nor ask I now who open left the well,
Whereinto, walking carelessly, I fell;
Not how I stumbled in the pit, but how
Best to emerge, is all my question now.

149

THE RIGHTEOUS OF THE WORLD.

See Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Fudenthum, s.v. p. 362.

The Rabbis, who devise strange dooms of wrath and ill,
For such as knew not here God's perfect law and will,
Yet these have told how they, as many as with true
And faithful heart fulfilled and loved the good they knew,
The Righteous of the world, shall once delivered be
From darkness, and brought in God's countenance to see:
Which thing they thus recount:—It shall befall one day
In those eternal courts where it is day alway,
Before Him will the Just sit ranged in order meet,
The holy Angels all will stand upon their feet;
And while they hymn the praise, the glory and the worth
Of Him who by a word created heaven and earth,
Will ever high and higher be borne and swept along
Heaven's azure-vaulted roofs the full concent of song:
Then will that mighty voice of jubilee be heard,
Until from end to end the spacious world is stirred,
Until even those that lie excluded from his face,
The Righteous of the world, who knew not of his grace
And law, while living—now will triumph in his name,
And with their loud Amen will join the glad acclaim.
Then He who knoweth all, yet purposing to show
His goodness, will demand from whence these voices grow.

150

The ministering angels then will answer and will say,
The while they veil for awe their faces—‘These are they,
Who did not know thy law while living, and for this
They lie in hell remote from glory and from bliss;
They cry Amen from thence.’—But He will of his grace
Compassion take on them and on their mournful case,
Will give the golden key from heaven's crystal floors,
Which opens with a touch hell's forty thousand doors,
And Michael, mighty prince, will fly with it amain,
On mercy's errand swift, and all the angelic train.
Hell's forty thousand gates will open at his word,
Its narrow chambers deep with expectation stirred.
And as a man draws up his neighbour from a pit,
When he shall have therein through evil hap alit,
The prisoners he will draw from dungeons where they lay,
And extricating lift from the deep and miry clay,—
Will wash and cleanse their wounds where they have plaguëd been,
And clothe in garments white, and beautiful and clean;
And taking by the hand, will lead them to the gate
Of Paradise, where they must for a moment wait;
Till there with leave brought in, they fall upon their face,
And worship God, and praise and magnify his grace:
While all that had before their places round the throne,
Will give new thanks for this new mercy He has shown,
And by new voices swelled, and higher and more strong,
Ring through the vaults of heaven the full concent of song.

151

PRAYER.

When prayer delights thee least, then learn to say,
Soul, now is greatest need that thou should'st pray.

Crookëd and warped I am, and I would fain
Straighten myself by thy right line again.

Oh come, warm sun, and ripen my late fruits;
Pierce, genial showers, down to my parchëd roots.

My well is bitter; cast therein the tree,
That sweet henceforth its brackish waves may be.

Say what is prayer, when it is prayer indeed?
The mighty utterance of a mighty need.

The man is praying, who doth press with might
Out of his darkness into God's own light.

White heat the iron in the furnace won;
Withdrawn from thence, 'tis cold and hard anon.

Flowers from their stalks divided, presently
Droop, fail, and wither in the gazer's eye.

The greenest leaf divided from its stem
To speedy withering doth itself condemn.

152

The largest river from its fountain head
Cut off, leaves soon a parched and dusty bed.

All things that live from God their sustenance wait,
And sun and moon are beggars at his gate.

All skirts extended of thy mantle hold,
When angel-hands from heaven are scattering gold.

153

THE FALCON'S REWARD.

Beneath the fiery cope of middle day
The youthful Prince, his train left all behind,
With eager eye gazed round him every way,
If springing well he anywhere might find.

His favourite falcon, from long aëry flight
Returning, and from quarry struck at last,
Told of the chase, which with its keen delight
Had thus allured him on so far and fast,—

Till gladly he had welcomed in his drought
The dullest pool that gathered in the rain:
But such, or fount of clearer lymph, he sought
Long through that blasted barren waste in vain.

What pleasure when, slow stealing o'er a rock,
He spied the glittering of a little rill,
Which yet, as if his burning thirst to mock,
Did its scant treasures drop by drop distil.

A golden goblet from his saddle-bow
He loosed, and from his steed alighted down,
To wait until that fountain, trickling slow,
Should in the end his golden goblet crown.

154

When set beside the promise of that draught
How poor had seemed to him the costliest wine,
That with its beaded bubbles winked and laughed,—
When set beside that nectar more divine.

The brimming vessel to his lips at last
He raised,—when, lo! the falcon on his hand,
With beak and pinion's sudden impulse, cast
That cup's rare treasure all upon the sand.

Long was it ere the fountain, pulsing slow,
Caused once again that chalice to run o'er;
When thinking no like hindrance now to know,
He raised it to his parchëd lips once more:

Once more, as if to cross his purpose bent,
The watchful bird,—as if on this one thing,
That drink he should not of that stream, intent,—
Struck from his hand the cup with forceful wing.

But when this new defeat his purpose found,
Swift penalty this time the bird must pay;
Hurled down with angry strength upon the ground,
Before her master's feet in death she lay:

And he, twice baffled, did meanwhile again
From that scant rill to slake his thirst prepare;
When, down the crags descending, of his train
One cried, ‘O monarch, for thy life forbear!

‘Coiled in these waters at their fountain head,
And causing them so feebly to distil,
A poisonous snake of hugest growth lies dead,
And doth with venom all the streamlet fill.’

155

Dropped from his hand the cup;—one look he cast
Upon the faithful creature at his feet;
Whose dying struggles now were almost past,
For whom a better guerdon had been meet;

Then homeward rode in silence many a mile:—
But if such thoughts did in his bosom grow,
As did in mine the painfulness beguile
Of that his falcon's end, what man can know?

I said—‘Such chalices the world fills up
For us, and bright and without bale they seem—
A sparkling potion in a jewelled cup,
Nor know we drawn from what infected stream.

‘Our spirit's thirst they promise to assuage,
And we those cups unto our death had quaffed,
If Heaven did not in dearest love engage
To dash the chalice down, and mar the draught.

‘Alas for us, if we that love are fain
With wrath and blind impatience to repay,
Which nothing but our weakness doth restrain,—
As he repaid his faithful bird that day;

‘If an indignant glance we lift above,
To lose some sparkling goblet discontent,
Which, but for that keen watchfulness of love,
Swift circling poison through our veins had sent.’

156

THE CONVERSION OF ABRAHAM.

See D'Herbelot, Bibliothèque Orientale, s.v. Abraham.

Fond heart, when learnest thou to say,
I love not pomps that fade away,
Nor glories that decay and wane,
Nor lights that rise to set again?
When wilt thou turn where Abraham turned,
And learn the lesson Abraham learned?
Beyond the river while he dwelt,
He with his kin to idols knelt,
And nightly gazing on the sky,
Worshipped the starry host on high.
But when he saw their splendours fail,
And that bright multitude grow pale,
He left them, and adored the moon;
But she too wanly wanëd soon.
Baffled, he knelt unto the sun;
But when his race of light was done,
He cried, ‘To such no vows I bring,
I worship not the perishing!’
And turned him to the God whose hand
Made sun, and moon, and starry band—
An everlasting Light, in whom
Decrease and shadow find no room.

157

THE TRUE PILGRIM.

The deeper religious minds of Mahomedanism spiritualize the pilgrimage to Mecca, and do not fail to urge that the performance of its outward details of duty will profit nothing, unless regarded as signs and symbols of higher truths. See in proof the Abu Seid of Hariri (Rückert's translation, vol. ii. pp. 36-46), a book equal in wit, and i many higher qualities immeasurably superior, to Gil Blas, the European work with which it naturally suggests a comparison.

‘My son,’—'twas thus upon his dying bed
To his sole heir the agëd monarch said,—
‘He who on every Moslem did impose,
That once at least before his life should close,
To Mecca he should wend his faithful way,
And in the mother city kneel and pray,
By shadows such as these did understand
The earnest seeking of a better land,
And a more real pilgrimage intend—
Even that which draws for me unto its end.
When thou then on this errand just art bent,
Let not thy labour all be vainly spent,
As vain the toil of many will be found,
Though duly they have paced the holy ground,
Circling the sacred shrine in many a ring,

The Caaba, the aim and object to which the pilgrimage is properly directed, is a plain and unpretending edifice. The Loretto of Mahomedanism having Seth for its builder, it was at the deluge carried by angels into heaven; and when that was past, brought back to earth. The reverence attached to it dates back to a period far anterior to the rise of Islam. The new religion adopted it with so much else into itself.

And duly drank of Zemsem's holy spring,

The holy well at Mecca, from which no pilgrim omits to draw water and to drink. It is said to be the same which sprang up in the wilderness for Hagar and her child.

And kissed that stone, which, white in heaven as snow,
Doth now coal-black through breath of sinners show;

This stone, also a legacy from Arabian heathenism to ‘the Faith,’ is fixed at about a man's height in the outer wall of the Caaba, and is duly kissed by every pilgrim. Snow-white when it fell from heaven, it has from the breath of sinners become perfectly black.

And all the weary desert way have made,
Pacing a-foot, in meanest garb arrayed,
Leaving no tittle unfulfilled of all
Which to a perfect pilgrim should befall.
Oh, many will have known the toil, the pain,
Who yet will miss that journey's truest gain;
For 'tis not merely that thou turn thy face
Towärd the Caaba and the holy place,

158

Unless as well thou dost in spirit fare
Towärd New Zion, and art journeying there.
Vainly whole heaps of pebbles wilt thou bring,
And at a fancied aëry devil fling,
Casting thy stone upon the very field,
Where Abraham's faith the tempter once repelled,
If all the while thou shunnest to molest
A truer devil, lurking in thy breast.
And what will profit to have laid aside
Thy gorgeous robes and outward signs of pride,
Taking in mean attire thy pilgrim way,
If pride be still thine inmost soul's array?
Oh! let humility thy garment be,
Which never suffer to be drawn from thee,
Although a Chosroes' mantle in its stead
By Fortune's hand to thee were offerëd.
Thou ridest; yet remember not the less
That many pace a-foot the wilderness:
Fare gently for their sakes; or if perchance,
Vigorous and strong, on foot thou dost advance,
Bethink thee still that with the caravan
Is many a child, and many an aged man.

‘O pilgrim, to the holy city bound,
Learn other dangers on thy pathway found.
To right or left if sounds thine ear invade,
Like tramplings of a mighty cavalcade,
Or voice by night which names thee by thy name,
As though from some familiar friend it came,
Bidding thee turn a little from thy way,
Or tarry, do not for thy life obey;
But close thine ears, and ever onward haste,
Eluding so the demons of the waste.

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Or if in fiery noon, when throat is dry,
And limbs are faint, far off thou dost espy
What seems to thee some broad transparent lake,
Delighting in its lucid breast to take
White clouds, far mountains, and inverted trees,
Do not forsake thy company for these:
'Tis but the floating heat of middle noon,
From sand-flats drawn, and which will vanish soon:
Oh woe! if thee it shall have lured away,
To flatter first, and afterwards betray.
My son, whom I can watch for now no more,
Grave deeply in thine heart this pilgrim lore;
About thy neck a father's precepts bind;
On, on, and leave these perils far behind.’

160

AN EASTERN VERSION OF THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS.

There went a man from home: and to his neighbours twain
He gave, to keep for him, two sacks of golden grain.
Deep in his cellar one the precious charge concealed;
And forth the other went and strewed it in his field.
The man returns at last—asks of the first his sack:
‘Here, take it; ’tis the same; thou hast it safely back.’
Unharmed it shows without, but when he would explore
His sack's recesses, corn there finds he now no more;
One half of all therein proves rotten and decayed,
Upon the other half have worm and mildew preyed.
The putrid heap to him in ire he doth return;
And of the other asks, ‘Where is my sack of corn?’
Who answered, ‘Come with me, behold how it has sped,’
And took and showed him fields with waving harvests spread.
Then cheerfully the man laughed out and cried, ‘This one
Had insight, to make up for the other that had none:
The letter he observed, but thou the precept's sense,
And thus to thee and me shall profit grow from hence.
In harvest thou shalt fill two sacks of corn for me,
The residue of right remains in full for thee.’

161

THE VASE OF HONEY.

Fair vessel hast thou seen with honey filled,
Which is no sooner opened, than descend
Upon the clammy sweets by bees distilled
A troop of flies, quick swarming without end?

Yet these when one doth fan away and beat,
Such as had lighted with a fearful care
On the jar's edge, nor cumbered wings and feet,
Lightly they mount into the upper air.

But all that headlong plunged those sweets among,
They cannot fly, in cloying sweetness bound;
The heavy toils have all around them clung,
In woful surfeitings their lives are drowned.

Such vessel is this world—fanned evermore
By death's dark Angel with his mighty wing;
Then all that had in pleasure's honied store
Their spirits sunk, they upward cannot spring.

Only they mount, who on this vessel's side
With heed alighting, had with extreme lip
Just ventured, there while suffered to abide,
Its sweets in measure and with fear to sip.

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EASTERN MORALITIES.

‘Who truly strives?’ they asked. Then one replied:
‘The man that owns no other goal beside
The throne of God, and till he there arrives,
Allows himself no rest, he truly strives.’

Honour each thing for that it once may be,
In bud the rose, in egg the eagle see;
Bright butterfly behold in ugly worm,
Nor doubt that man enfolds an angel form.

My friends exclaimed, who saw me bowed with woe:
‘Be of good cheer; the world is ebb and flow
‘To the dead fish what helps it,’ I replied,
‘That back returns the free and flowing tide?’

A pebble, thrown into the mighty sea,
Sinks, and disturbs not its tranquillity:
No ocean, but a shallow pool, the man
Whom every little wrong disquiet can.

A monk that once did at a king's board feed,
Ate less than was his wont and was his need:
And the meal done, when he a grace should say,
Prayed more and longer than he used to pray.
O friend, if great things may in small be found,
Quite other road than heavenward thou art bound.

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He is a friend, who treated as a foe,
Now even more friendly than before doth show;
Who to his brother still remains a shield,
Although a sword for him his brother wield;
Who of the very stones against him cast
Builds friendship's altar higher and more fast.

With needle's point more easily you will
Uproot and quite unfasten a huge hill,
Than from the bosom you will dig up pride;
And the ant's footfall sooner is descried,
On black earth moving, in the blackest night,
Than are pride's subtle movements brought to light.

When men exalt thee with their flatteries,
Occasion take thine own self to despise;
And as a help to this, the meanest thing
Which thou hast ever done to memory bring.
Think, too, that now thou dost in peril fall
Of doing a yet meaner thing than all,
If, being what thou art in thine own sight,
Thou dost this praise appropriate as thy right.

The business of the world is child's play mere;
Too many, ah! the children playing here:
Their pleasure and their woe, their loss and gain,
Alike mean nothing, and alike are vain—
As children's, who, to pass the time away,
Build up their booths, and buy and sell in play;
But homeward hungering must at eve repair,
And standing leave their booths with all their ware:
So the world's children, when their night is come,
With empty satchels turn them sadly home.

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Renounce the world, that thou its lord may'st be;
Become a servant, to be truly free.
O arrow, yield thee to thy Monarch's bow,
That whither He would send thee thou may'st go.
O camel, kneel, and freely take thy load;
And freely bear it, needing not the goad.
For thy Belovëd be a light-toned flute,
That to his slightest breath is never mute.
In the mind hide not, when God seeks for thee,
Rude ore, that stamped, his money thou may'st be.

Sage, who would'st maker of thine own god be,
When made, alas! what will he profit thee?
Most like art thou to children, that astride
On reeds or wooden horses proudly ride;
And as they trail them on the ground, they cry,
‘This is the lightning, and its Lord am I!’
Yet, while they deem their horses them upbear,
Themselves the bearers of their horses are;
And when they grow aweary of their course,
They find no strength in these, no help, no force.
How otherwise they fare, how fresh, how strong,
Not of themselves, but borne of God along!
How jubilant to Him they lift their head,
Till the ninth heaven shakes underneath their tread!

True knowledge is the waking up of powers
To conscious life, which were already ours.
What now is mine in leaf and flower and fruit,
That I possessed before in bud and root.
The faded writing of the mind again
By chymic art comes forth distinct and plain.
Springs that were stopt, when that is cleared away
That choked them, bubble in the open day.

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The stars appear at eve; which yet have been
All day in heaven, although till now unseen.
The dawn lights up the landscape; the great sun
Shows, but not makes, the world he looks upon.
I found a rich pearl flung upon my coast,
Which yet no other but myself had lost.
I entered a large hall; no foreign dome,
But even my own long-left forgotten home;
And in what seemed at first a stranger face
A former friend I daily learn to trace.

Who that might watch the moon in heaven, would look
At her weak image in the water-brook?
Who were content, that might in presence stand
Of one beloved, with letters from his hand?
When thou hast learned the name, hast thou the thing?
What life to thee will definitions bring?
Will the four letters, R, O, S, and E,
The rose's hues and fragrance bring to thee?
Feed not on husks, but these strip off, and feed
On the rich kernel, which is food indeed.
Say, who of choice would wash in arid sand,
While limpid streams were bubbling close at hand?
Bare Science is dry sand;—thy spirit's wings
Bathe thou in Love's delicious water-springs.
Be thou the bee, which ever to its cell
Not wax alone, but honey brings as well:
Good is the wax for light, but better still
What will thine hive with storëd sweetness fill.

His splendid pilgrimage to Mecca done,
Within the temple great Almansur's son
Showered with a bounty prodigal and proud
Enormous gifts among the struggling crowd;

166

And every day those gifts he multiplied,
Vexed every day and humbled in his pride,
That one who seemed the poorest pilgrim there,
Remained aloof with calm abstracted air
Indifferent, and contended not nor prest,
To share his lavish largess with the rest.
Until at last, when he had shed in vain
Gold, jewels, pearls, he could no more refrain,
But cried to him, ‘And dost thou nought desire,
And wilt thou nothing at my hands require?
Who answered, standing where before he stood
‘Great shame it were for me, if any good,
While thus a suppliant in God's house I stand
I asked or looked for, saving at his hand.’

Man, the caged bird that owned a higher nest,
Is here awhile detained, reluctant guest;
Plumage and beak he shatters in his rage,
And with his prison doth vain war engage;
For him the falcon watches, and his snare
The bloody fowler doth for him prepare.
Exíled from home, he here must sadly sing,
In spring lack autumn, and in autumn spring.
Far from his nest, he shivers on a wall,
Where blows on him of rude misfortune fall—
His head with weight of misery sore bowed down,
His pinion clogged with dust, his courage gone.
Then from his nest in heaven is heard a cry,
And straight he spreads his wings divine on high:
Lift him, O Lord, unto the lotus-tree,
No meaner pitch may with his birth agree;
Grant him a pinion of such lofty flight,
That he may on the lotus-tree alight:

167

In thy bright palaces his nest prepare;
O happy, happy bird that nesteth there!

Sate in his presence-chamber Solomon;
When thither of his princes entered one,
Haste in his step, and terror in his eye,
And cried, ‘O King, defend me, or I die;
Even now I saw with visage dark and fell
Gaze on me the Death-angel Azraël.’
To him the King: ‘What help may I afford?’
‘Oh bid the storm-wind, gracious mighty lord,
That it to farthest India waft me straight;
And there my life shall reach a longer date.’
To farthest Ind at Solomon's command
The storm-wind swept him over sea and land.
But when the Spirits met another day,
To the Death-angel spake the Monarch: ‘Say,
Why did thy terrors that poor man affright,
Till he for anguish well nigh died outright,
That poor man, whom I sheltered with my might?’
Then he: ‘I meant not dreadful to appear,
But only wondered to behold him here;
For God had bid me on that very day
From farthest Ind to fetch his soul away.
I thought, Were thousand pinions given to thee,
To-day in India thou shouldst never be;
Nor guessed how this should be fulfilled, till there
Thy word did waft him, answering to his prayer.’

A hen, though such tame creatures mostly are,
Yet once received a water-bird in care;
Its mother-instinct drew the fledgling still
To the wide ocean-floods, to roam at will;

168

Its timid nurse, upon the other hand,
Sought evermore to lead it back to land.
O man! thy mother, Heaven, thy nurse is Earth,
And thou of both wert nurtured from thy birth;
From thy true mother comes thine impulse free
To launch forth boldly upon being's sea;
While aye thy nurse fears for thee, and would fain
Thee to a narrow strip of dry restrain.
Up, and remember Adam's kingly worth,
How angels danced before him at his birth,
How unto him they rendered homage all,
And served him at the glorious festival,
The bridal of two worlds, that kissed and met
The morn when he in Paradise was set.
Up, man, for what if thou with beasts hast part,
Since in the body framed of dust thou art,
Yet know thyself upon the other side
Greater than angels, and to God allied.
But ah! I sound this high alarum in vain,
Sunk on thy bosom doth thy head remain:
In lists of love while noblest bosoms bleed,
That flies not vex thee, this is all thine heed.
Up, be a man at last; with Abraham go
From house and kindred forth, thy God to know
Fair shine the sun and moon and host of heaven,
To eye of sense no fairer sight is given:
Yet cry with him: ‘These rise to set again;
I worship Him, a light that will not wane.’
Into the wilderness with Moses hie,
And hear that mighty word, ‘The Lord am I.’
Then hast thou won the place that is thine own,
A sitter on the threshold of God's throne.