human
Can you continue this poem for me?
  The stars have sunk from the celestial bowers,
And in the garden have been turned to flowers.
MUTAMID, _in captivity_.
Now the book is finished, so far as I shall finish it. There is,
my friend, but this one page to write. And, more than probably,
this is the page of all the book that I shall never wish to blot.
pages of this volume. But when I look upon your name I hear a
troop of memories, and in their singing is my happiness.
When you receive this book, presuming that the Russian Censor
does not shield you from it, I have some idea what you will do.
The string, of course, must not be cut, and you will seriously
set about the disentangling of it. One hand assists by holding
up, now near the nose now farther off, your glasses; the other
hand pecks at the string. After, say, twenty minutes there will
enter the admirable Miss Fox--oh! the tea she used to make for us
professor, standing now not far from Russia's helm, would always
drive ahead of us and say, with princely gesture, that if we
suffered from the dust it was advisable that he should be the one
scent: Miss Fox, that woman of resource, will cut the string. And
while your other secretary is discoursing music, mournful Russian
book at arm's length.
"The Serbonian Bog," says Miss Fox, repeating the last lines of
the dictation.
Your face is held sideways with what is called, I believe, a
quizzical expression.
"Morocco," says she, "viewed from the banks of the Seine, is
becoming more and more like the Serbonian Bog." Then she waits,
discreet as always, while you think. Miss Fox, his thoughts are
There his boat, eleven years ago, was sailing underneath a net of
joined at first by common suffering,--and how shall mortals find
a stronger link? On board that boat there was an elderly
American, the widow of a senator's brother-in-law, whose mission
was, she took it, to convert those two. What specially attracted
her to them was not, perhaps, that they excelled the other
passengers in luridness, but that they had the privilege of
understanding, more or less, her language.
"Feci quod potui," said Dr. Dillon, "faciant meliora potentes."
another object of her ministrations, had addressed her as "Your
honour, the foreign devil." And this caused her to discuss the
details of our final journey--in the meantime we have taken many
others of a more delightful sort--and she assured us that we
extremely little hope for any of them, and Abu'l-Ala, the Syrian
poet, whom Dr. Dillon had been putting into English prose,--
Abu'l-Ala she steadily refused to read. Nor did the prospect of
beholding him in English verse evoke a sign of joy upon her
countenance. "Oh," she exclaimed, "what good is it?" And there is
potentes."
The object of the Editors of this series is a very definite one.
They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these
books shall be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding
between East and West--the old world of Thought and the new of
Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but
followers of the highest example in the land. They are confident
that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy
of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of
Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another
creed and colour. Finally, in thanking press and public for the
very cordial reception given to the "Wisdom of the East" Series,
they wish to state that no pains have been spared to secure the
best specialists for the treatment of the various subjects at
hand.
God help him who has no nails wherewith to scratch himself.
_Arabian proverb_.
An effort has been made to render in this book some of the poems
of Abu'l-Ala the Syrian, who was born 973 years after Jesus
Christ and some forty-four before Omar Khayyam. But the life of
such a man--his triumph over circumstance, the wisdom he
achieved, his unconventionality, his opposition to revealed
religion, the sincerity of his religion, his interesting friends
at Baghdad and Ma'arri, the multitude of his disciples, his
kindliness and cynic pessimism and the reverence which he
enjoyed, the glory of his meditations, the renown of his
prodigious memory, the fair renown of bending to the toil of
public life, not to the laureateship they pressed upon him, but
the post of being spokesman at Aleppo for the troubles of his
native villagers,--the life of such a one could not be told
within the space at our command; it will, with other of his
poems, form the subject of a separate volume. What appears
advisable is that we should devote this introduction to a
commentary on the poems here translated; which we call a "diwan,"
commentary on the writings of a modern poet is supposed to be
superfluous, but in the days of Abu'l-Ala of Ma'arri you were
held to pay the highest compliment if, and you were yourself a
poet, you composed a commentary on some other poet's work.
Likewise you were held to be a thoughtful person if you gave the
world a commentary on your own productions; and Abu'l-Ala did not
Tinder") and his _Lozum ma la Yalzam_ ("The Necessity of what is
Unnecessary"), out of which our diwan has been chiefly made. But
his elucidations have been lost. And we--this nobody will
contradict--have lost the old facility. For instance, Hasan ibn
Malik ibn Abi Obaidah was one day attending on Mansur the
Chamberlain, and he displayed a collection of proverbs which Ibn
Sirri had made for the Caliph's delectation. "It is very fine,"
quoth Mansur, "but it wants a commentary." And Hasan in a week
returned with a commentary, very well written, of three hundred
couplets. One other observation: we shall not be able to present
upon these pages a connected narrative, a dark companion of the
poem, which is to the poem as a shadow to the bird. A mediæval
Arab would have no desire to see this theory of connection put in
admiration, would be as a company of stars much more than as a
flying bird. Suppose that he produced a poem of a hundred lines,
he would perchance make fifty leaps across the universe. But if
we frown on such discursiveness, he proudly shows us that the
hundred lines are all in rhyme. This Arab and ourselves--we
differ so profoundly. "Yet," says he, "if there existed no
diversity of sight then would inferior merchandise be left
unsold." And when we put his poem into English, we are careless
of the hundred rhymes; we paraphrase--"Behold the townsmen," so
cried one of the Bedawi, "they have for the desert but a single
word, we have a dozen!"--and we reject, as I have done, the
quantitative metre, thinking it far preferable if the metre sings
the poet wants to give; and we oppose ourselves, however
unsuccessfully, to his discursiveness by making alterations in
the order of the poem. But in this commentary we shall be obliged
begin.
With regard to prayer (_quatrain_ 1), the Moslem is indifferent
as to whether he perform this function in his chamber or the
street, considering that every spot is equally pure for the
service of God. And yet the Prophet thought that public worship
was to be encouraged; it was not a vague opinion, because he knew
prayer. It is related of al-Muzani that when he missed being
present in the mosque he repeated his prayers twenty-five times.
"He was a diver for subtle ideas," said the biographer Ibn
Khallikan. And although our poet, quoting the Carmathians, here
deprecates the common worship, he remarks in one of his letters
that he would have gone to mosque on Fridays if he had not fallen
animals in Mecca and elsewhere, at various stones which were
regarded as idols or as altars of the gods. Sometimes they
killed a human being, such as the four hundred captive nuns of
whom we read that they were sacrificed by al-Mundhir to the
goddess Aphrodite. Sheep are offered up to-day in Palestine: for
instance, if the first wife of a man is barren and the second
wife has children, then the former vows that in return for a son
she will give a lamb. Apparently when it was thought desirable to
of with the Persians, Indians, and more western people. White was
thought that a black lamb must be dedicated to the water sprite
before he would teach any one to play the harp. As for the
subsequent fate of the victim, Burton tells us that the Moslems
do not look with favour on its being eaten. Unlike them, Siberian
on a scaffold for the gods, and chant a song and then consume the
arrak and toddy and rice, which they have previously offered to
their deities.
The words of Abu'l-Ala concerning day and night (_quatrain_ 2)
may be compared with what he says elsewhere:
These two, young for ever,
Speed into the West--
Our life in their clutches--
And give us no rest.
"Generation goeth and generation cometh," says Ecclesiastes,
"while for ever the earth abideth. The sun riseth also and the
sun goeth down and cometh panting back to his place where he
riseth." . . . The early dawn, the time of scarlet eyes, was also
rising sun is worshipped by the Bedawi, despite the prohibition
of Mahomet and despite the Moslem dictum that the sun rises
between the devil's horns. Now the divinity of the stars
(_quatrain_ 4) had been affirmed by Plato and Aristotle; it was
said that in the heavenly bodies dwelt a ruling intelligence
superior to man's, and more lasting. And in Islam, whose holy
house, the Kaaba, had traditionally been a temple of Saturn, we
notice that the rationalists invariably connect their faith with
the worship of Venus and other heavenly bodies. We are told by
ash-Shahrastani, in his _Book of Religious and Philosophical
Sects_, that the Indians hold Saturn for the greatest luck, on
account of his height and the size of his body. But such was not
Abu'l-Ala's opinion. "As numb as Saturn," he writes in one of his
you." Elsewhere he says in verse:
If dark the night, old Saturn is a flash
Of eyes which threaten from a face of ash.
And the worship of Saturn, with other deities, is about a hundred
poet, cling about the wretched even as a coat of mail (_quatrain_
sudden evil any person who recites them frequently. When this
evil is complete, with rings strongly riven, it passes away while
this quatrain of a winding-sheet, and that could be of linen or
of damask. The Caliph Solaiman was so fond of damask that every
one, even the cook, was forced to wear it in his presence, and it
book. The expression that a man's destiny is written on his
forehead, had its origin without a doubt, says Goldziher, in
India. We have remarked upon the Indian ideas which had been
gathered by Abu'l-Ala at Baghdad. There it was that he enjoyed
the opportunity of seeing ships (_quatrain_ 11). He spent a
portion of his youth beside the sea, at Tripoli. But in the
capital were many boats whose fascination he would not resist,--
the Chinese junks laboriously dragged up from Bassora, and dainty
in this place and in others, very frequently, in fact, Abu'l-Ala
makes mention of the sea, his fondness of it was, one thinks, for
is to hear about a friend who purposes to risk himself upon the
sea, and he recalls a certain verse: "Surely it is better to
drink among the sand-heaps foul water mixed with pure than to
venture on the sea." From Baghdad also he would carry home the
Zoroastrian view (_quatrain_ 14) that night was primordial and
the light created. As a contrast with these foreign importations,
finest of Arabian instruments. They said themselves that it was
invented by a man who flourished in the year 500 B.C. and added
an eighth string to the lyre. Certainly the Arab lute was popular
Menander. It was carried to the rest of Europe by crusaders at
the beginning of the twelfth century, about which time it first
appears in paintings, and its form persisted till about a hundred
twenty-seventh letter of Abu'l-Ala, "I observe," says he, "that
you find fault with travelling. Why so? Ought not a man to be
satisfied with following the precedent set by Moses, who, when he
(Koran 28, 21). Should a man be satisfied with what he hears from
philosopher has laid it down that, "Verily there is nothing
constant in this world of coming and going (_quatrain_ 24), in
which we may be deprived at any moment of what we love. Only in
the world of reason is stability to be found. If then we desire
to see our wishes fulfilled and would not be robbed of what is
dear to us, we must turn to the eternal blessings of reason, to
the fear of God, to science and to good works. But if we follow
merely after material possessions in the belief that we can
retain them, we are pursuing an object which does not really
exist." . . . And this idea of transitoriness prevails so
generally among the Arabs that the salad-seller recommends his
transitory wares to pious folk by calling, "God is that which
does not pass away!" So, too, the Arab pictures as a bird, a
thing of transience, the human soul. In Syria the dove is often
carved upon their ancient tombstones. And the Longobards among
their graves erected poles in memory of kinsfolk who had died
abroad or had been slain in battle; on the summit of the pole was
(_quatrain_ 26), the soul may metaphorically be imagined as a
bird, but for the European's ancestor it was a thing of sober
earnest, as it is to-day to many peoples. Thus the soul of
Aristeas was seen to issue from his mouth in the shape of a
raven. In Southern Celebes they think that a bridegroom's soul
is apt to fly away at marriage, wherefore coloured rice is
scattered over him to induce it to remain. And, as a rule, at
festivals in South Celebes rice is strewed on the head of the
person in whose honour the festival is held, with the object of
detaining his soul, which at such times is in especial danger of
being lured away by envious demons. . . . This metaphor was
used by Abu'l-Ala in the letter which he wrote on the death of
his mother: "I say to my soul, 'This is not your nest, fly
away.'" And elsewhere (_quatrain_ 34) Death is represented as a
reaper. Says Francis Thompson:
The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeper
The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.
It is interesting to find Death also called a sower, who
disseminates weeds among men: "Dô der Tôt sînen Sâmen under si
It was an ancient custom of the Arabs when they took an oath of
special significance to plunge their hands into a bowl of perfume
the perfumes, musk (_quatrain_ 38) was one which they affected
most. Brought commonly from Turkistan, it was, with certain
quantities of sandalwood and ambra, made into a perfume. And "the
Mahomet, "shall on the Day of Judgment be resplendent with
vermilion and odorous as musk." This was repeated by Ibnol
Faradhi, who in the Kaaba entreated God for martyrdom and, when
this prayer was heard, repented having asked. . . . This quatrain
There is in the third book of a work on cookery (so rare a thing,
century editor to the effect that it is a vulgar error to suppose
beating; the long poles and stones which are used by boys and
others to get the fruit down, for the trees are very high, are
used rather out of kindness to themselves than with any regard to
ascribed to Cœlius Apicius; its science, learning, and
discipline were extremely condemned, and even abhorred by Seneca
and the Stoics. . . . Aloes-wood does not emit a perfume until it
Lo! of hundreds who aspire
Eighties perish--nineties tire!
They who bear up, in spite of wrecks and wracks,
Were season'd by celestial hail of thwacks.
Fortune in this mortal race
Builds on thwackings for its base;
Thus the All-Wise doth make a flail a staff,
And separates his heavenly corn from chaff.
Reward may follow on such absolute obedience (_quatrain_ 40). We
remember what is said by Fra Giovanni in the prison of
Viterbo: "Endurez, souffrez, acceptez, veuillez ce que Dieu
veut, et votre volonté sera faite sur la terre comme au ciel."
And perhaps the dawn for you may be your camel's dawn (_quatrain_
I will not have to go on foot." The camel was tied with its head
towards its hind legs, a saddle-cloth was wrapped about its neck,
divided from the body by Azrael, the angel of death. Afterwards
the body is commanded to sit upright in the grave, there to be
examined by the two black angels, Monkar and Nakyr (_quatrain_
of Mahomet. If the answers be correct, the body stays in peace
and is refreshed by the air of paradise; if incorrect, these
angels beat the corpse upon his temples with iron maces, until he
in these two angels; he reminds one of St. Catherine of Sienna, a
one afternoon to be a hermit. She was careful to provide herself
with bread and water, fearing that the angels would forget to
bring her food, and at nightfall she ran home again because she
was afraid her parents would be anxious. With regard to the angel
escapes with much trouble from the snares of earth (_quatrain_
We think of the goddess Rân with her net. Death is imagined
(_quatrain_ 44) as a fowler or fisher of men, thus: "Dô kam der
Tôt als ein diep, und stal dem reinen wîbe daz leben ûz ir
On account of its brilliance a weapon's edge (_quatrain_ 46) has
been compared in Arab poetry with sunlit glass, with the torch of
would an Arab turn to picturesque comparisons in poetry alone.
Speaking of a certain letter, Abu'l-Ala assures the man who wrote
holds the reins of prose and verse" (_quatrain_ 50). Now with
regard to glass, it was a very ancient industry among the Arabs.
In the second century of the Hegira it was so far advanced that
they could make enamelled glass and unite in one glass different
colours. A certain skilled chemist of the period was not only
expert in these processes (_quatrain_ 52), but even tried to make
Death, from being a silent messenger who punctually fulfilled his
Psalms (xci. 3-6) he comes as a hunter with snares and arrows.
Also "der Tôt wil mit mir ringen." In ancient times Death was
not a being that slew, but simply one that fetched away to the
underworld, a messenger. So was the soul of the beggar fetched
away by angels and carried into Abraham's bosom. An older view
was the death-goddess, who receives the dead men in her house and
gloomy journey, provided with various things. "Chacun remonte
à son tour le calvaire des siècles. Chacun retrouve les peines,
chacun retrouve l'espoir désespéré et la folie des siècles.
Chacun remet ses pas dans les pas de ceux qui furent, de ceux qui
morts" (_quatrain_ 57). It is the same for men and trees
(_quatrain_ 59). This vision of Abu'l-Ala's is to be compared
with Milton's "men as trees walking," a kind of second sight, a
blind man's pageant. In reference to haughty folk, an Arab
proverb says that "There is not a poplar which has reached its
Lord." But on the other hand, "There are some virtues which dig
their own graves," and with regard to excessive polishing of
swords (_quatrain_ 60) we have the story of the poet Abu Tammam,
related by Ibn Khallikan. He tells us how the poet once recited
verses in the presence of some people, and how one of them was a
philosopher who said, "This man will not live long, for I have
seen in him a sharpness of wit and penetration and intelligence.
From this I know that the mind will consume the body, even as a
sword of Indian steel eats through its scabbard." Still, in
Arabia, where swords were so generally used that a priest would
strap one to his belt before he went into the pulpit, there was
no unanimous opinion as to the polishing,--which, by the way, was
rarely polished, according as he wished to emphasise the large
amount of work accomplished or the excellence of the polishing.
Imru'al-Kais says that his sword does not recall the day when it
was polished. Another poet says his sword is polished every day
and "with a fresh tooth bites off the people's heads." This
vigour of expression was not only used for concrete subjects.
There exists a poem, dating from a little time before Mahomet,
which says that cares (_quatrain_ 62) are like the camels,
roaming in the daytime on the distant pastures and at night
returning to the camp. They would collect as warriors round the
flag. It was the custom for each family to have a flag
(_quatrain_ 65), a cloth fastened to a lance, round which it
gathered. Mahomet's big standard was called the Eagle,--and, by
the bye, his seven swords had names, such as "possessor of the
With _quatrain_ 68 we may compare the verses of a Christian poet,
And where is now the lord of Hadr, he that built it and laid
taxes on the land of Tigris?
A house of marble he established, whereof the covering was
made of plaster; in the galbes were nests of birds.
He feared no sorry fate. See, the dominion of him has departed.
Loneliness is on his threshold.
"Consider how you treat the poor," said Dshafer ben Mahomet, who
pilgrimaged from Mecca to Baghdad between fifty and sixty times;
"they are the treasures of this world, the keys of the other."
Take care lest it befall you as the prince (_quatrain_ 69) within
successful," says Machiavelli, "it is requisite that he should
have a spirit capable of turns and variations, in accordance with
than the praying of a rich man through a thousand years." And in
connection with this quatrain we may quote Blunt's rendering of
I have learned that he who giveth nothing, deaf to his
friends' begging,
loosed shall be to the world's tooth-strokes: fools'
feet shall tread on him.
As for the power of the weak, we have some instances from
Abbaside history. One of the caliphs wanted to do deeds of
violence in Baghdad. Scornfully he asked of his opponents if they
the arrows of the night." And he desisted from his plans.
Prayers, complaints, and execrations which the guiltless,
fighting his oppressor, sends up to heaven are called the arrows
of the night and are, the Arabs tell us, invariably successful.
This belief may solace you for the foundation of suffering
(_quatrain_ 71), which, by the way, is also in the philosophic
system of Zeno the Stoic. Taking the four elements of Empedocles,
while only fire is active, and that not wholly. It was Zeno's
opinion that everything must be active or must suffer. . . . An
explanation for our suffering is given by Soame Jenyns, who
flourished in the days when, as his editor could write, referring
received by gentlemen with the profoundest gratitude." Soame's
thesis is his "Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil,"
that human sufferings are compensated by the enjoyment possibly
experienced by some higher order of beings which inflict them, is
To all inferior animals 'tis given
To enjoy the state allotted them by Heav'n.
And (_quatrain_ 75) we may profitably turn to Coleridge:
Oh, what a wonder seems the fear of death!
Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep;
Babes, children, youths and men,
Night following night, for threescore years and ten.
We should be reconciled, says Abu'l-Ala (_quatrain_ 76), even to
the Christian kings of Ghassan, in the Hauran. These were the
hereditary enemies of the kings of Hirah. On behalf of the Greek
emperors of Constantinople they controlled the Syrian Arabs. But
they disappeared before the triumphant Moslems, the last of their
capital was Bosra, on the road between the Persian Gulf and the
Mediterranean. Nowadays the district is chiefly occupied by
nomads; to the Hebrews it was known as Bashan, famous for its
flocks and oak plantations. We can still discern the traces of
troglodyte dwellings of this epoch. The afore-mentioned Jabalah
was a convert to Islam, but, being insulted by a Mahometan, he
returned to Christianity and betook himself to Constantinople,
where he died. But in the time of Abu'l-Ala, the Ghassanites were
Ghassan," says Abu'l-Ala, "who followed the course of the dead;
each of them is now but a tale that is told, and God knows who is
the greatest liar. But in this case Abu'l-Ala in prose was not so
Ghassanites were still a power. The poet, for our consolation,
has a simile (_quatrain_ 77) that may be put against a passage of
As with autumnal harvests cover'd o'er,
And thick bestrown, lies Ceres' sacred floor,
When round and round, with never-weary'd pain
The trampling steers beat out th' unnumber'd grain:
So the fierce coursers, as the chariot rolls,
Tread down whole ranks, and crush out heroes' souls.
For everything there is decay, and (_quatrain_ 78) for the
striped garment of a long cut which now we are unable to
identify.
We read in the Wisdom of Solomon: "As when an arrow is shot at a
mark, it parteth the air which immediately cometh together again,
(_quatrain_ 84), if the weapon's road of air is not in vain it
will discover justice in the sky. How much the Arabs were averse
from frigid justice is to be observed in the matter of recompense
dates--but they looked askance upon the person who was willing to
accept a gift as satisfaction and at the same time to escape
reproach, he shot an arrow into the air. Should it come down
unspotted, he was able to accept the gift; if it was bloody, then
like other joys of life. The players had ten arrows, which they
shot into the air; seven of them bestowed a right to the portion
of a camel, the other three did not. Abu'l-Ala was fond of using
arrows metaphorically. "And if one child," he writes to a
distinguished sheikh, "were to ask another in the dead of night
in a discussion: 'Who is rewarded for staying at home many times
what he would be rewarded for going on either pilgrimage?' and
the second lad answered: 'Mahomet, son of Sa'id,' his arrow would
(_quatrain_ 86) is a greater duty than either pilgrimage." And
our poet calls to mind some benefits attached to slavery
(_quatrain_ 88): for an offence against morals a slave could
receive fifty blows, whereas the punishment of a freeman was
double. A married person who did not discharge his vows was
liable to be stoned to death, whereas a slave in similar
circumstances was merely struck a certain number of blows. It was
himself in very trifling matters. The sympathy Abu'l-Ala displays
(_quatrain_ 92) he wanted for himself. And these necessaries of
Abu'l-Ala, the ascetic, must appeal to us as more sincerely felt
than those of Ibn at-Ta'awizi, who was of opinion that when seven
reasonable to stay away. The list is as follows: a melon, honey,
roast meat, a young girl, wax lights, a singer, and wine. But Ibn
inclined to celebrate the wilderness. He has portrayed
(_quatrain_ 93) a journey in the desert where a caravan, in order
spy, who scours the country from the summit of a hill or rock.
Should he perceive a sign of danger, he will wave his hand in
warning. From Lebid's picture of another journey--which the
pre-Islamic poet undertook to the coast lands of Hajar on the
Persian Gulf--we learn that when they entered a village he and
his party were greeted by the crowing of cocks and the shaking of
Churches are substituted for bells. . . . And the mediæval
leper, in his grey gown, was obliged to hold a similar object,
waving it about and crying as he went: "Unclean! unclean!"
An ambitious man desired, regardless of expense, to hand down his
mind to have a crown," said Epictetus, "take a crown of roses,
for it is more beautiful." In the words of Heredia:
Déjà le Temps brandit l'arme fatale. As-tu
L'espoir d'éterniser le bruit de ta vertu?
Un vil lierre suffit à disjoindre un trophée;
Et seul, aux blocs épars des marbres triomphaux
Où ta gloire en ruine est par l'herbe étouffée,
Quelque faucheur Samnite ébréchera sa faulx.
Would we write our names so that they endure for ever? There was
in certain Arab circles a heresy which held that the letters of
the alphabet (_quatrain_ 101) are metamorphoses of men. And
Magaira, who founded a sect, maintained that the letters of the
alphabet are like limbs of God. According to him, when God wished
men, both the good and the bad; but, at sight of the sins which
men were going to commit, He entered into such a fury that He
sweated, and from His sweat two seas were formed, the one of salt
infidels were formed, and from the second the Shi'ites. But to
this view of the everlasting question you may possibly prefer
what is advanced (_quatrains_ 103-7) and paraphrased as an
episode: Whatever be the wisdom of the worms, we bow before the
silence of the rose. As for Abu'l-Ala, we leave him now
prostrated (_quatrain_ 108) before the silence of the rolling
world. It is a splendour that was seen by Alfred de Vigny:
Je roule avec dédain, sans voir et sans entendre,
A côté des fourmis les populations;
Je ne distingue pas leur terrier de leur cendre.
J'ignore en les portant les noms des nations.
On me dit une mère et je suis une tombe.
Mon hiver prend vos morts comme son hécatombe,
Mon printemps n'entend pas vos adorations.
Avant vous j'étais belle et toujours parfumée,
J'abandonnais au vent mes cheveux tout entiers. . . .
 Of course I use Professor Margoliouth's superb edition of the
letters.
 _Cf_. Thielmann, _Streifzüge im Kaukasus, etc_.
 Quoted by Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, vol. 2, p. 845.
 _Cf_. in Scandinavia the death-goddess Hel.
 Ella d'Arcy, _Modern Instances_.
 Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Schwarzlose, _Die Waffen der alten
Araber, aus ihren Dichtern dargestellt_.
Abandon worship in the mosque and shrink
From idle prayer, from sacrificial sheep,
For Destiny will bring the bowl of sleep
Or bowl of tribulation--you shall drink.
The scarlet eyes of Morning are pursued
By Night, who growls along the narrow lane;
But as they crash upon our world the twain
Devour us and are strengthened for the feud.
Vain are your dreams of marvellous emprise,
Vainly you sail among uncharted spaces,
Vainly seek harbour in this world of faces
If it has been determined otherwise.
Behold, my friends, there is reserved for me
The splendour of our traffic with the sky:
You pay your court to Saturn, whereas I
Am slain by One far mightier than he.
You that must travel with a weary load
Along this darkling, labyrinthine street--
Have men with torches at your head and feet
If you would pass the dangers of the road.
So shall you find all armour incomplete
And open to the whips of circumstance,
That so shall you be girdled of mischance
Till you be folded in the winding-sheet.
Have conversation with the wind that goes
Bearing a pack of loveliness and pain:
The golden exultation of the grain
And the last, sacred whisper of the rose
But if in some enchanted garden bloom
The rose imperial that will not fade,
And underneath her glories build a tomb?
Shall I that am as dust upon the plain
Think with unloosened hurricanes to fight?
Or shall I that was ravished from the night
Fall on the bosom of the night again?
Endure! and if you rashly would unfold
That manuscript whereon our lives are traced,
Recall the stream which carols thro' the waste
And in the dark is rich with alien gold.
Myself did linger by the ragged beach,
Whereat wave after wave did rise and curl;
And as they fell, they fell--I saw them hurl
A message far more eloquent than speech:
_We that with song our pilgrimage beguile,
With purple islands which a sunset bore,
We, sunk upon the sacrilegious shore,
May parley with oblivion awhile_.
I would not have you keep nor idly flaunt
What may be gathered from the gracious land,
But I would have you sow with sleepless hand
The virtues that will balance your account.
The days are dressing all of us in white,
For him who will suspend us in a row.
But for the sun there is no death. I know
The centuries are morsels of the night.
A deed magnanimous, a noble thought
Are as the music singing thro' the years
When surly Time the tyrant domineers
Against the lute whereoutof it was wrought.
Now to the Master of the World resign
Whatever touches you, what is prepared,
For many sons of wisdom are ensnared
And many fools in happiness recline.
Long have I tarried where the waters roll
From undeciphered caverns of the main,
And I have searched, and I have searched in vain,
Where I could drown the sorrows of my soul.
If I have harboured love within my breast,
'Twas for my comrades of the dusty day,
Who with me watched the loitering stars at play,
Who bore the burden of the same unrest.
For once the witcheries a maiden flung--
Then afterwards I knew she was the bride
Of Death; and as he came, so tender-eyed,
I--I rebuked him roundly, being young.
Yet if all things that vanish in their noon
Are but the part of some eternal scheme,
Of what the nightingale may chance to dream
Or what the lotus murmurs to the moon!
Have I not heard sagacious ones repeat
An irresistibly grim argument:
That we for all our blustering content
Are as the silent shadows at our feet.
Aye, when the torch is low and we prepare
Beyond the notes of revelry to pass--
Old Silence will keep watch upon the grass,
The solemn shadows will assemble there.
No Sultan at his pleasure shall erect
A dwelling less obedient to decay
Than I, whom all the mysteries obey,
Build with the twilight for an architect.
Dark leans to dark! the passions of a man
Are twined about all transitory things,
For verily the child of wisdom clings
More unto dreamland than Arabistan.
Death leans to death! nor shall your vigilance
Prevent him from whate'er he would possess,
Nor, brother, shall unfilial peevishness
Prevent you from the grand inheritance.
Farewell, my soul!--bird in the narrow jail
Who cannot sing. The door is opened! Fly!
Ah, soon you stop, and looking down you cry
The saddest song of all, poor nightingale.
Our fortune is like mariners to float
Amid the perils of dim waterways;
Shall then our seamanship have aught of praise
If the great anchor drags behind the boat?
Ah! let the burial of yesterday,
Of yesterday be ruthlessly decreed,
And, if you will, refuse the mourner's reed,
And, if you will, plant cypress in the way.
As little shall it serve you in the fight
If you remonstrate with the storming seas,
As if you querulously sigh to these
Of some imagined haven of delight.
Steed of my soul! when you and I were young
We lived to cleave as arrows thro' the night,--
Now there is ta'en from me the last of light,
And wheresoe'er I gaze a veil is hung.
No longer as a wreck shall I be hurled
Where beacons lure the fascinated helm,
For I have been admitted to the realm
Of darkness that encompasses the world.
Man has been thought superior to the swarm
Of ruminating cows, of witless foals
Who, crouching when the voice of thunder rolls,
Are banqueted upon a thunderstorm.
But shall the fearing eyes of humankind
Have peeped beyond the curtain and excel
The boldness of a wondering gazelle
Or of a bird imprisoned in the wind?
Ah! never may we hope to win release
Before we that unripeness overthrow,--
So must the corn in agitation grow
Before the sickle sings the songs of peace.
Lo! there are many ways and many traps
And many guides, and which of them is lord?
For verily Mahomet has the sword,
And he may have the truth--perhaps! _perhaps!_
Now this religion happens to prevail
Until by that religion overthrown,--
Because men dare not live with men alone,
But always with another fairy-tale.
Religion is a charming girl, I say;
But over this poor threshold will not pass,
For I may not unveil her, and alas!
The bridal gift I can't afford to pay.
I have imagined that our welfare is
Required to rise triumphant from defeat;
And so the musk, which as the more you beat,
Gives ever more delightful fragrancies.
For as a gate of sorrow-land unbars
The region of unfaltering delight,
So may you gather from the fields of night
That harvest of diviner thought, the stars.
Send into banishment whatever blows
Across the waves of your tempestuous heart;
Let every wish save Allah's wish depart,
And you will have ineffable repose.
My faith it is that all the wanton pack
Of living shall be--hush, poor heart!--withdrawn,
As even to the camel comes a dawn
Without a burden for his wounded back.
If there should be some truth in what they teach
Of unrelenting Monkar and Nakyr,
Before whose throne all buried men appear--
Then give me to the vultures, I beseech.
Some yellow sand all hunger shall assuage
And for my thirst no cloud have need to roll,
And ah! the drooping bird which is my soul
No longer shall be prisoned in the cage.
Life is a flame that flickers in the wind,
A bird that crouches in the fowler's net--
Nor may between her flutterings forget
That hour the dreams of youth were unconfined.
There was a time when I was fain to guess
The riddles of our life, when I would soar
Against the cruel secrets of the door,
So that I fell to deeper loneliness.
One is behind the draperies of life,
One who will tear these tanglements away--
No dark assassin, for the dawn of day
Leaps out, as leapeth laughter, from the knife.
If you will do some deed before you die,
Remember not this caravan of death,
But have belief that every little breath
Will stay with you for an eternity.
Astrologers!--give ear to what they say!
"The stars be words; they float on heaven's breath
And faithfully reveal the days of death,
And surely will reveal that longer day."
I shook the trees of knowledge. Ah! the fruit
Was fair upon the bleakness of the soil.
I filled a hundred vessels with my spoil,
And then I rested from the grand pursuit.
Alas! I took me servants: I was proud
Of prose and of the neat, the cunning rhyme,
But all their inclination was the crime
Of scattering my treasure to the crowd.
And yet--and yet this very seed I throw
May rise aloft, a brother of the bird,
Uncaring if his melodies are heard--
Or shall I not hear anything below?
The glazier out of sounding Erzerûm,
Frequented us and softly would conspire
Upon our broken glass with blue-red fire,
As one might lift a pale thing from the tomb.
He was the glazier out of Erzerûm,
Whose wizardry would make the children cry--
There will be no such wizardry when I
Am broken by the chariot-wheels of Doom.
The chariot-wheels of Doom! Now, hear them roll
Across the desert and the noisy mart,
Across the silent places of your heart--
Smile on the driver you will not cajole.
I never look upon the placid plain
But I must think of those who lived before
And gave their quantities of sweat and gore,
And went and will not travel back again.
Aye! verily, the fields of blandishment
Where shepherds meditate among their cattle,
Those are the direst of the fields of battle,
For in the victor's train there is no tent.
Where are the doctors who were nobly fired
And loved their toil because we ventured not,
Who spent their lives in searching for the spot
To which the generations have retired?
"Great is your soul,"--these are the words they preach,--
"It passes from your framework to the frame
Of others, and upon this road of shame
Turns purer and more pure."--Oh, let them teach!
I look on men as I would look on trees,
That may be writing in the purple dome
Romantic lines of black, and are at home
Where lie the little garden hostelries.
Live well! Be wary of this life, I say;
Do not o'erload yourself with righteousness.
Behold! the sword we polish in excess,
We gradually polish it away.
God who created metal is the same
Who will devour it. As the warriors ride
With iron horses and with iron pride--
Come, let us laugh into the merry flame.
But for the grandest flame our God prepares
The breast of man, which is the grandest urn;
Yet is that flame so powerless to burn
Those butterflies, the swarm of little cares.
And if you find a solitary sage
Who teaches what is truth--ah, then you find
The lord of men, the guardian of the wind,
The victor of all armies and of age.
See that procession passing down the street,
The black and white procession of the days--
Far better dance along and bawl your praise
Than if you follow with unwilling feet.
But in the noisy ranks you will forget
What is the flag. Oh, comrade, fall aside
And think a little moment of the pride
Of yonder sun, think of the twilight's net.
The songs we fashion from our new delight
Are echoes. When the first of men sang out,
He shuddered, hearing not alone the shout
Of hills but of the peoples in the night.
And all the marvels that our eyes behold
Are pictures. There has happened some event
For each of them, and this they represent--
Our lives are like a tale that has been told.
There is a palace, and the ruined wall
Divides the sand, a very home of tears,
And where love whispered of a thousand years
The silken-footed caterpillars crawl.
And where the Prince commanded, now the shriek
Of wind is flying through the court of state:
"Here," it proclaims, "there dwelt a potentate
Who could not hear the sobbing of the weak."
Beneath our palaces the corner-stone
Is quaking. What of noble we possess,
In love or courage or in tenderness,
Can rise from our infirmities alone.
We suffer--that we know, and that is all
Our knowledge. If we recklessly should strain
To sweep aside the solid rocks of pain,
Then would the domes of love and courage fall.
But there is one who trembles at the touch
Of sorrow less than all of you, for he
Has got the care of no big treasury,
And with regard to wits not overmuch.
I think our world is not a place of rest,
But where a man may take his little ease,
Until the landlord whom he never sees
Gives that apartment to another guest.
Say that you come to life as 'twere a feast,
Prepared to pay whatever is the bill
Of death or tears or--surely, friend, you will
Not shrink at death, which is among the least?
Rise up against your troubles, cast away
What is too great for mortal man to bear.
But seize no foolish arms against the share
Which you the piteous mortal have to pay.
Be gracious to the King. You cannot feign
That nobody was tyrant, that the sword
Of justice always gave the just award
Before these Ghassanites began to reign.
You cultivate the ranks of golden grain,
He cultivates the cavaliers. They go
With him careering on some other foe,
And your battalions will be staunch again.
The good law and the bad law disappear
Below the flood of custom, or they float
And, like the wonderful Sar'aby coat,
They captivate us for a little year.
God pities him who pities. Ah, pursue
No longer now the children of the wood;
Or have you not, poor huntsman, understood
That somebody is overtaking you?
God is above. We never shall attain
Our liberty from hands that overshroud;
Or can we shake aside this heavy cloud
More than a slave can shake aside the chain?
"There is no God save Allah!"--that is true,
Nor is there any prophet save the mind
Of man who wanders through the dark to find
The Paradise that is in me and you.
The rolling, ever-rolling years of time
Are as a diwan of Arabian song;
The poet, headstrong and supremely strong,
Refuses to repeat a single rhyme.
An archer took an arrow in his hand;
So fair he sent it singing to the sky
That he brought justice down from--ah, so high!
He was an archer in the morning land.
The man who shot his arrow from the west
Made empty roads of air; yet have I thought
Our life was happier until we brought
This cold one of the skies to rule the nest.
Run! follow, follow happiness, the maid
Whose laughter is the laughing waterfall;
Run! call to her--but if no maiden call,
'Tis something to have loved the flying shade.
You strut in piety the while you take
That pilgrimage to Mecca. Now beware,
For starving relatives befoul the air,
And curse, O fool, the threshold you forsake.
How man is made! He staggers at the voice,
The little voice that leads you to the land
Of virtue; but, on hearing the command
To lead a giant army, will rejoice.
Behold the cup whereon your slave has trod;
That is what every cup is falling to.
Your slave--remember that he lives by you,
While in the form of him we bow to God.
The lowliest of the people is the lord
Who knows not where each day to make his bed,
Whose crown is kept upon the royal head
By that poor naked minister, the sword.
Which is the tyrant? say you. Well, 'tis he
That has the vine-leaf strewn among his hair
And will deliver countries to the care
Of courtesans--but I am vague, you see.
The dwellers of the city will oppress
Your days: the lion, a fight-thirsty fool,
The fox who wears the robe of men that rule--
So run with me towards the wilderness.
Our wilderness will be the laughing land,
Where nuts are hung for us, where nodding peas
Are wild enough to press about our knees,
And water fills the hollow of our hand.
My village is the loneliness, and I
Am as the travellers through the Syrian sand,
That for a moment see the warning hand
Of one who breasted up the rock, their spy.
Where is the valiance of the folk who sing
These valiant stories of the world to come?
Which they describe, forsooth! as if it swum
In air and anchored with a yard of string.
Two merchantmen decided they would battle,
To prove at last who sold the finest wares;
And while Mahomet shrieked his call to prayers,
The true Messiah waved his wooden rattle.
Perchance the world is nothing, is a dream,
And every noise the dreamland people say
We sedulously note, and we and they
May be the shadows flung by what we seem.
Zohair the poet sang of loveliness
Which is the flight of things. Oh, meditate
Upon the sorrows of our earthly state,
For what is lovely we may not possess.
Heigho! the splendid air is full of wings,
And they will take us to the--friend, be wise
For if you navigate among the skies
You too may reach the subterranean kings.
Now fear the rose! You travel to the gloom
Of which the roses sing and sing so fair,
And, but for them, you'd have a certain share
In life: your name be read upon the tomb.
There is a tower of silence, and the bell
Moves up--another man is made to be.
For certain years they move in company,
But you, when fails your song do fail as well.
No sword will summon Death, and he will stay
For neither helm nor shield his falling rod.
We are the crooked alphabet of God,
And He will read us ere he wipes away.
How strange that we, perambulating dust,
Should be the vessels of eternal fire,
That such unfading passion of desire
Should be within our fading bodies thrust.
_Deep in a silent chamber of the rose
There was a fattened worm. He looked around,
Espied a relative and spoke at him:
It seems to me this world is very good_.
_A most unlovely world, said brother worm,
For all of us are piteous prisoners.
And if, declared the first, your thought is true,
And this a prison be, melikes it well_.
_So well that I shall weave a song of praise
And thankfulness because the world was wrought
For us and with such providential care--
My brother, I will shame you into singing_.
_Then, cried the second, I shall raise a voice
And see what poor apologies are made.
And so they sang, these two, for many days,
And while they sang the rose was beautiful_.
_But this affected not the songful ones,
And evermore in beauty lived the rose.
And when the worms were old and wiser too,
They fell to silence and humility_.
A night of silence! 'Twas the swinging sea
And this our world of darkness. And the twain
Rolled on below the stars; they flung a chain
Around the silences which are in me.
The shadows come, and they will come to bless
Their brother and his dwelling and his fame,
When I shall soil no more with any blame
Or any praise the silence I possess.
Arab names have always been a stumbling-block, and centuries ago
there was a treatise written which was called "The Tearing of the
patronymic (Abu Bakr--father of Bakr), the personal name (Ahmad),
names if they were poets (such as Ssorrdorr, the sack of pearls,
who died in the year 1072), names connoting kindred, habitation
(such as Ahmad al-Maidani, the great collector of proverbs, who
lived near the Maidan, the race-course of Naisapur), faith or
trade or personal defects (such as a caliph who was called the
father of flies, since on account of his offensive breath no fly
would rest upon his lip), and finally they gave each other names
of honour (such as sword of the empire, helper of the empire,
etc.). Then the caliph gave, as a distinction, double titles and,
Arabs: "O Queen," says Das, a king of Indian folk-song, "O Queen,
of excellence, or Abu'l-Feda, father of redemption). At times
this manufactured patronymic was a thing of mockery, more or less
and was entitled "father of the cat"). The prevalence among the
Arabs of the patronymic is immediately noticed, (a camel is the
father of Job; a strongly built person is the father of the
locust; a licentious person is the father of the night; and there
surnames, it was not the custom always for them to denote that
so-and-so was the son of his father's family. "Who is your
father?" says an Arab to the mule, and he replies, "The horse is
my maternal uncle." So there are some people who, for shame,
prefer that we should think of them as members of their mother's
The following additional quatrains may be quoted:
Unasking have we come,--too late, too soon
Unasking from this plot of earth are sent.
But we, the sons of noble discontent,
Use half our lives in asking for the moon.
("We all sorely complain," says Seneca, "of the shortness of
time, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our
lives are either spent in doing nothing at all or in doing
nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do.
We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as
though there would be no end of them.")
So then your hand has guarded me! Be blessed,
And, if you like such reading, read, I pray,
Through Moses' book, or credit them who say
That old Isaiah's hand is far the best.
Some day, some day the potter shall return
Into the dust. O potter, will you make
An earth which I would not refuse to take,
Or such unpleasant earth as you would spurn?
Then out of that--men swear with godly skill--
Perchance another potter may devise
Another pot, a piece of merchandise
Which they can love and break, if so they will.
assistant
Sure, a continuation for this poem could be:
  And from a resting-place you may be hurled
And from a score of countries may be thrust--
Poor brother, you the freeman of the dust,
Like any slave are flung about the world.