XLIII
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Ḥāfiẓ, active 14th century and Bell, Gertrude Lowthian
This ode is inscribed upon the tomb of Hafiz.
THE END
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh & London
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter.
Source notes
1. For the history of the times of Hafiz, see Defrémery in the Journal Asiatique for 1844 and 1845, Malcolm’s “History of Persia,” Price’s “Mohammedan History,” Markham’s “History of Persia.” For the life of the poet, see V. Hammer; Defrémery in the Journal Asiatique for 1858; Sir Gore Ouseley and Daulat Shah, whose work is mainly a string of anecdote—I have been told that Lutfallah’s is little better.
2. The “Travels of Ibn Batuta,” edited by Defrémery and Sanguinetti.
3. Journal des Savants for 1821 and 1822.
4. Numberless beautiful images are used to describe the union of God and man. Jelaleddin Rumi points the same moral in the following exquisite apologue: “There came one and knocked at the door of the Beloved. And a voice answered and said, ‘Who is there?’ The lover replied, ‘It is I.’ ‘Go hence,’ returned the voice; ‘there is no room within for thee and me.’ Then came the lover a second time and knocked, and again the voice demanded, ‘Who is there?’ He answered, ‘It is thou.’ ‘Enter,’ said the voice, ‘for I am within.’”
5. Dr. Johnson’s contribution to this vexed question is perhaps as good as any other: “Sir,” said he to Boswell, “we know the will is free, there’s an end on’t.”
6. Les Religions de l’Asie Centrale.
7. Cf. St. Paul, who is scarcely more explicit: “Work out your own salvation; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Phil. ii. 12).
8. Dabistan.
9. Hallaj lived in the ninth century. He was believed by some to be a sorcerer, and by others a holy worker of miracles. He was condemned to death with horrible tortures by the Khalif of Baghdad in 919, and his ashes were thrown into the Tigris. It is said that a Sufi once asked God why he suffered his servant Hallaj to fall into the Khalif’s hands, and was answered, “Thus the revealers of secrets are punished.”
10. Gulshen-i-Raz.
11. Yusuf and Zuleikha.
12. “A Year among the Persians.” Browne.
13. Sayyed Ahmed of Isfahan.
14. Listen to the advice of an Afghan singer who wrote his Ars Poetica in the mountains south of Peshawar about the middle of the seventeenth century:—
“The arrow needs an archer, and poetry a magician.
“He must hold ever in the hand of his mind the weighing scales of metre, rejecting the verse which is too short and that which is too long.
“His mistress, Truth, shall mount her black steed, the veil of allegory drawn across her brow.
“Let her shoot from beneath her eyelashes a hundred glances, challenging and victorious.
“Let the poet place upon her fingers the jewels of the art of many hues, adorn her with the sandal-wood and the saffron of metaphor;
“The bells of alliteration like bangles upon her feet, and on her bosom the necklace of a mysterious rhythm.
“Add to these the hidden meaning, like eyes half seen through their lashes, that her whole body may be a perfect mystery.”—“Translation of the Kilidi Afghani,” by T. C. Plowden.
I fear the outcome of these directions is too often “amphora coepit institui, currente rota cur urceus exit,” and perhaps the advice of Horace may be the better of the two—“denique sit, quod vis, simplex dumtaxat et unum.”
15. Cantique des Cantiques.