VINE-VISIONS.
While the House of Hope is builded on the weak and shifting sand,
While our breath is as the wind is, take the flagon in your hand;
For while I was quaffing, laughing in the tavern yester-night,
From the unknown world an angel floated on my swimming sight—
Handed me a golden vessel, bade me drink, and as I drank
All my swooning senses straightway in the pool of slumber sank;
And I dreamed a dream enchanted of a land beyond the sky,
Where no youthful cheek grows paler, where no flagon e’er runs dry,
Where no woman whispers falsely, where no eyes are ever wet,
Where no kisses ever weary, where no loving hearts forget.
Then I woke, and wept at waking, leaving in that pleasant land
Fairer flowers than Mosellay has, bluer domes than Samarcand.
Nevermore, unhappy Hafiz, will you tread that pleasant land,
Though you sucked the Seven Oceans from their cup of golden sand.
A DREAM.
I dreamt, about the morning hours,
That in a field of scented flowers,
By Rocknabad’s cool flow,
I saw Ferangis go
Swift by me like a dream of spring;
And I, whose heart was hot to fling
Myself before my dear,
Stood full of silent fear.
And then I dreamt she came to lay
Softly her hand in mine and say,
‘Hafiz, you yet shall know
How happy is your woe;
For what gift can the silent years
Offer so precious as these tears,
And memory of the ache
Your heart had for my sake?’
Then, seeming stirred by pitying thought
Of all the joy I vainly sought,
You gave your hand to kiss,
Saying, ‘Remember this
When you and I are grey and old,
When all this fiery love is cold,
And, honouring lost delight,
Keep your soul’s whiteness white.’
I had no power to speak or move;
Slowly the image of my love
Faded before my eyes
Like light from summer skies.
I wake and find Ferangis gone,
Yet scarce believe I am alone;
One minute since my hand
Had touched her where I stand.
I read of men whom love made mad
In antique legends, softly sad
As wind is after rain.
I weep for Saadi’s pain,
And stir the dust that lies above
Long shelves of poets crossed in love,
To gain from their disgrace
Some comfort for my case.
I find fit voices for my grief
In many a buried poet’s leaf;
But, ah! what ancient song
Contains a charm so strong
That it shall make your heart confess
You love me, neither more or less?
Which learning, surely I
Might be content to die.
And yet, when I reflect how fair
Those almond eyes and sable hair
And gracious body are,
I cry, ‘Out of my star
Such beauty is;’ I am as one
Who dreams of kingdoms till the sun
Warns, if he would be fed,
To rise and beg his bread.
Soft voices whisper in my ears,
‘What girl deserves the grace of tears?’
Courage! the world is wide;
Life’s best is to be tried.
If this love fail, fresh loves await;
The reddest roses blossom late.
Have you not passed before
Out of love’s curtained door?
ATTAR OF LOVE.
There is neither pledge nor pity in the beauty of the rose
For the nightingale, whose sorrow in melodious madness flows;
Though the brown bird sang for ever till its singing spirit fled,
Still the rose would greet the west wind with its petals’ perfect red.
Once a songster in the garden chanted to a scornful rose,
‘Cease thy scorn, for in the hedges many a fairer blossom grows.’
Then the rose made answer smiling, ‘Singer, thou hast spoken sooth,
But no lover e’er addresses lover with so little ruth.
‘Think not how the roses wither, be but gay while roses bloom,
For the world’s delight is little in the shadow of the tomb.’
Hafiz, if you sang more sweetly than the wind among the reeds,
She you love is but the rose tree, and the rose tree never heeds.
VAULTING AMBITION.
Once in my way an Arab story came
Relating how a poet, drugged with wine,
Watched from the tavern door where the divine
Pale moon lit all the sky with silver flame;
And crying, ‘By Allah’s eternal name,
I swear that argent splendour shall be mine!’
Leaped, clutching at the sky, and rolled supine
A muddy rascal, steeped in mire and shame.
This is our common madness. Am not I
Moon-haunted by thy beauty? Yet I stand
No farther from the empress of the sky
Than from one touch of thy all-conquering hand;
And though my songs made all the heavens sigh,
I know you will not pity, nor understand.
A NIGHT-PIECE.
Once at night I paced my garden, seeking—but I sought in vain—
From the perfume of the roses balsam for my burning brain;
For through all that dusk the circle of a single damask bloom
Shone more brightly than the cresset on a true believer’s tomb;
And so haughty in the splendour of her beauty burned this rose,
That she banished from the bosom of the nightingale repose,
While the eyes of sad narcissus floated o’er with loving tears,
And the tulip bared her bosom wounded by a thousand spears.
Vainly then the lily offered to console the poet’s care,
Vainly too the violet pleaded, ‘Are no other blossoms fair?’
Since the only potent rival of the rose tree is the vine,
Let me drown my hopeless passion in the Seven Seas of wine.
‘Hafiz, I conjure thee, from the rose tree pluck thy heart away.’
Lo, the message is delivered, and the bearer speeds away.
FALLEN ANGELS.
’Tis written in the Writing how a pair
Of angels dwelt with children of the dust,
And judged between the just and the unjust;
Loyal to God, until a woman, fair
As sun or stars, entangled in her hair
The hearts of those twin angels, and dark lust
Consumed them, till they whispered, ‘Surely must
We temper justice to a thing so rare.’
God punished those false angels, yet if I
Were placed like them upon some judgment-seat
Speaking the law, and you came wandering by,
One smile of yours would fling me at your feet
Crying, ‘Have pity upon me, O most sweet!
Do with me as you will, and let me die.’
PRAISE OF WINE.
Once again the ruddy vintage storms the chambers of my brain,
Steals my senses with its kisses, steals and yet shall steal again;
But I do not blame the grape’s blood for the vengeances it wreaks
When it plants its purple standard on the stronghold of my cheeks.
May Allah confer his blessing on the hands that pluck the grape,
May their footsteps never fail who tread its clusters out of shape.
Since the love of wine was written by Fate’s finger on my brow,
What is written once is written, and you cannot change it now;
Talk no babble about wisdom: in the awful hour of death,
Is the breath of Aristotle better than the beggar’s breath?
Spare me, pious friend, reproaches, for the selfsame God who chose
You to be so wise and pious, made me love the wine and rose.
Hafiz, spend thy life so wisely that when thou at last art dead,
‘Dead’ may not be all the comment, all the requiem that’s said.
HAROUN ER-RASHEED’S POET.
Khalifah Haroun, surnamed Er-Rasheed,
In the calm evening of a festal day,
Ordered his bard, Abu-l’Atahiyeh,
To praise the life it pleased his lord to lead.
The poet bowed and stirred the silver wires,
And sang, ‘Khalifah, peace and pleasure wait
Within the shadow of your palace gate,
And deep fulfilment of your heart’s desires.’
Said Haroun, smiling, ‘Here is silver speech
That shall be sealed with silver; speak again,
And find my bounty boundless as the main
Which knows, so poets say, no further beach.’
Again the poet’s voice and lute allied,
‘Let not the day star nor the night star shine
Upon the hour that leaves a wish of thine,
Thy lightest wish, Haroun, ungratified.’
Still Haroun smiled, ‘This time thy words are gold,
And shall be guerdoned with a golden fee;
Sing on, sweet voice, sing on and comfort me,
Nor ever fear to find thy master cold.’
Then sang Abu-l’Atahiyeh aloud,
‘In those dark moments when thy faltering breath
Shall strive in vain against all-conquering death,
These things shall seem like shadows on a shroud.’
There fell a fearful silence on the place,
While the scared guests saw Haroun from his throne
Frown at the bard, and then, with a deep groan,
Hide in his trembling hands his weeping face.
Straightway a supple courtier standing by
Cried to the singer, ‘Blasted be the throat
Which frights our master with a boding note
In lieu of mirthful music; look to die.’
‘Nay,’ Haroun whispered, ‘do not blame the bard;
He saw our soul benighted, and, like wind,
Dispersed the veil of error. Let him find
My richest gems too poor for his reward.’
GHAZEL.
If the gracious girl I worship would but take my heart in hand,
I would give her for her beauty Ispahan and Samarcand.
But this lass, the very fairest trouble of our tranquil town,
Plucks all patience from my bosom, lifts my hopes to laugh them down.
She has slandered me, so be it; I forgive her, speaking sooth,
For the harshest words fall softly from the scarlet lips of youth;
Yet I dare not call her cruel, though she does me grievous wrong,
For what lovely face is flattered by the proudest poet’s song?
Fill, then, friend, while wine remaineth, for in Paradise, dear lad,
We shall sigh for Mosellay and weep the waves of Rocknabad.
Speak of wine and song and women; cease, I pray, to seek in vain,
What that mystery most mystic called to-morrow may contain.
String thy pearls and sing them, Hafiz, for from heaven’s golden bars
God has shed upon thy verses all the sweetness of the stars.
THE GRAVE OF OMAR-I-KHAYYAM.
I, named Nizami, child of Samarcand,
The holy place whose towers aspire to heaven,
Whose domes are blue as heaven’s inverted cup,
The consecrated shrine, head of Islam,
Whose heart is at Meccah, the happy spot
Where bloom the gardens of the Heart’s Delight,
Where in the house upon the Shepherd’s Hill
Wise men pursue the pathway of the stars—
I, even Nizami, write this record down
In God’s name, merciful, compassionate,
A proof of his compassion.
When my youth
Burned in my body like a new-fed flame,
When wisdom seemed an easy flower to pluck,
And knowledge fruit that ripens in a day;
Ah me! that merry When so long ago
I was a pupil of that man of men,
Omar, the tent-maker of Naishapur,
That is Khorassan’s crown, Omar the wise,
Whose wisdom read the golden laws of life,
And made them ours for ever in his songs,
Omar the star-gazer.
One day by chance,
I taxing all my student’s store of wit
With thought of is and is not, good and bad,
And fondly dreaming that my fingers soon
Would close upon the key of heaven and earth,
I met my master in a garden walk,
Musing as was his wont, I knew not what,
Perhaps some better mode of marshalling
Those daily soldiers of the conquering years,
Perchance some subtler science which the stars
Ciphered in fire upon the vaulted sky
For him alone, perchance on some rare rhymes
Pregnant with mighty thoughts, or on some girl,
Star-eyed and cypress-slender, tulip-cheeked
And jasmine-bosomed, for he loved such well,
And deemed it wisdom.
Omar saw me not,
And would have passed me curtained in his thoughts;
But I, perked up with youthful consequence
At mine own wisdom, plucked him by the sleeve,
And with grave salutation, as befits
The pupil to the master, stayed his course
And craved his patience.
Omar gazed at me
With the grave sweetness which his servants loved,
And gave me leave to speak, which I, on fire
To tell the thing I thought, made haste to do,
And poured my babble in the master’s ear
Of solving human doubt.
When I had done,
And, panting, looked into my master’s eyes
To read therein approval of my plan,
He turned his head, and for a little while
Waited in silence, while my petulant mind
Galloped again the course of argument
And found no flaw, all perfect.
Still he stood
Silent, and I, the riddle-reader, vexed
At long-delayed approval, touched again
His sleeve, and with impatient reverence
Said,
‘Master, speak, that I may garner up
In scented manuscripts the thoughts of price
That fall from Omar’s lips.’
He smiled again
In sweet forgiveness of my turbulent mood,
And with a kindly laughter in his eyes
He said,
‘I have been thinking, when I die,
That I should like to slumber where the wind
May heap my tomb with roses.’
So he spoke,
And then with thoughtful face and quiet tread
He past and left me staring, most amazed
At such a pearl from such a sea of thought,
And marvelling that great philosophers
Can pay so little sometimes heed to truth
When truth is thrust before them. God be praised!
I am wiser now, and grasp no golden key.
Years came and went, and Omar passed away,
First from those garden walks of Samarcand
Where he and I so often watched the moon
Silver the bosoms of the cypresses,
And so from out the circle of my life,
And in due season out of life itself;
And his great name became a memory
That clung about me like the scent of flowers
Beloved in boyhood, and the wheeling years
Ground pleasure into dust beneath my feet;
And so the world wagged till there came a day
When I that had been young and was not young,
I found myself in Naishapur, and there
Bethought me of my master dead and gone,
And the musk-scented preface of my youth.
Then to myself I said, ‘Nizami, rise
And seek the tomb of Omar.’
So I sought,
And after seeking found, and, lo! it lay
Beyond a garden full of roses, full
As the third heaven is full of happy eyes;
And every wind that whispered through the trees
Scattered a heap of roses on his grave;
Yea, roses leaned, and from their odorous hearts
Rained petals on his marble monument,
Crimson as lips of angels.
Then my mind,
Sweeping the desert of departed years,
Leaped to that garden speech in Samarcand,
The cypress grove, my fretful questioning,
And the mild beauty of my master’s face.
Then I knelt down and glorified Allah,
Who is compassionate and merciful,
That of his boundless mercy he forgave
This singing sinner; for I surely knew
That all the leaves of every rose that dripped
Its tribute on the tomb where Omar sleeps,
Were tears and kisses that should smooth away
His record of offence; for Omar sinned,
Since Omar was a man.
He wished to sleep
Beneath a veil of roses; Heaven heard,
Forgave, and granted, and the perfumed pall
Hides the shrine’s whiteness. Glory to Allah!
OMAR ANSWERS.
Now by the memory of Kai Khosru,
Of Kaikobad, of Zal and Rustem too,
O English singer rousing me from sleep,
The student of the stars will answer you.
For what avails it cycles to have lain
Since first the roses gushed their scented rain
Upon my grave in Naishapur if men
In the world’s winter take my name in vain?
Through piled-up earth and ages echoes reach
My tranquil slumbers of an alien speech,
Blown over seas wherein strange doctors preach
Strange sermons on the things I thought to teach.
For, misinterpreting the songs I sung,
By vain desire and vain ambition stung,
O for one hour of that lost age! they cry,
That golden age when old Khayyam was young.
Fools who believe the world was otherwise
Than what it now is in the Persian’s eyes,
Or think the secret of content was found
Beneath the canopy of Persian skies.
Man is to-day what man was yesterday—
Will be to-morrow; let him curse or pray,
Drink or be dull, he learns not nor shall learn
The lesson that will laugh the world away.
The world as grey or just as golden shows,
The wine as sweet or just as bitter flows,
For you as me; and you, like me, may find
Perfume or canker in the reddest rose.
The tale of life is hard to understand;
But while the cup waits ready to your hand,
Drink and declare the summer roses blow
As red in London as in Samarcand.
Lips are as sweet to kiss and eyes as bright
As ever fluttered Omar with delight;
English or Persian, while the mouth is fair,
What can it matter how it says good-night?
Whether the legend in the Book of Youth
Runs left or right, it reads a prayer for ruth;
The music of the bird upon the bough
Meant, and still means, no more nor less than truth.
The wisdom of the wisest of the wise
Is but the pinch of powder in the eyes
Thrown by the fingers of the fiend, that we
True things from false may fail to recognise.
And not a pang which vexes human flesh,
And not a problem which the Sufis thresh,
But scared my body or perplexed my soul,
And what I felt each man must feel afresh.
So, brother, by Allah! forbear to weep:
Life is a wine which you may drink as deep
As ever I did, for the hour will come
When you, like old Khayyam, will fall asleep.
Therefore, O northern singer! prithee cease
To vex my sprite with questions. Know, thy lease
Was by the selfsame Master made as mine;
Be patient, then, and let me sleep in peace.
ﺗﻢ ﺍﻟﻜﺘﺎﺏ Tum el kitaab
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE.
Unusual, archaic and obsolete spellings have not been changed. The only change made in the text was to add the Dedication and the Transcriber’s Note to the Table of Contents. The cover was produced at pgdp.net and is in the public domain.
The Persian phrase on the title page is a line from one of the Ghazels of Hafiz, which might be translated as: ‘If my hand cannot reach your trailing tress the fault lies in my own ill-starred fate and stumpy arm.’ The Persian phrase at the end of the book means ‘The end of the book.’ Persian transliteration and translations by Matthew Melvin-Koushki.