The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 06, April, 1858

We do not wish to strew sugar on bottled spiders, or try to make mystical divinity out of the Song of Solomon, much less out of the erotic and bacchanalian songs of Hafiz. Hafiz himself is determined to defy all such hypocritical interpretation, and tears off his turban and throws it at the head of the meddling dervis, and throws his glass after the turban. But the love or the wine of Hafiz is not to be confounded with vulgar debauch. It is the spirit in which the song is written that imports, and not the topics. Hafiz praises wine, roses, maidens, boys, birds, mornings, and music, to give vent to his immense hilarity and sympathy with every form of beauty and joy; and lays the emphasis on these to mark his scorn of sanctimony and base prudence. These are the natural topics and language of his wit and perception. But it is the play of wit and the joy of song that he loves; and if you mistake him for a low rioter, he turns short on you with verses which express the poverty of sensual joys, and to ejaculate with equal fire the most unpalatable affirmations of heroic sentiment and contempt for the world. Sometimes it is a glance from the height of thought, as thus:—"Bring wine; for, in the audience-hall of the soul's independence, what is sentinel or Sultan? what is the wise man or the intoxicated?"—and sometimes his feast, feasters, and world are only one pebble more in the eternal vortex and revolution of Fate:—

  "I am: what I am  My dust will be again."

A saint might lend an ear to the riotous fun of Falstaff; for it is not created to excite the animal appetites, but to vent the joy of a supernal intelligence. In all poetry, Pindar's rule holds,—[Greek: sunetois phonei], it speaks to the intelligent; and Hafiz is a poet for poets, whether he write, as sometimes, with a parrot's, or, as at other times, with an eagle's quill.

Every song of Hafiz affords new proof of the unimportance of your subject to success, provided only the treatment be cordial. In general, what is more tedious than dedications or panegyrics addressed to grandees? Yet in the "Divan" you would not skip them, since his muse seldom supports him better.

  "What lovelier forms things wear,  Now that the Shah comes back!"

And again:—

  "Thy foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike    down.  Poises Arcturus aloft morning and evening    his spear."

And again:—

  "Mirza! where thy shadow falls,  Beauty sits and Music calls;  Where thy form and favor come,  All good creatures have their home."

Here are a couple of stately compliments to his Shah, from the kindred genius of Enweri:—

    "Not in their houses stand the stars,    But o'er the pinnacles of thine!"  "From thy worth and weight the stars    gravitate,  And the equipoise of heaven is thy house's    equipoise!"

It is told of Hafiz, that, when he had written a compliment to a handsome youth,—

  "Take my heart in thy hand, O beautiful boy    of Schiraz!  I would give for the mole on thy cheek Samarcand    and Buchara!"—

the verses came to the ears of Timour in his palace. Timour taxed Hafiz with treating disrespectfully his two cities, to raise and adorn which he had conquered nations. Hafiz replied, "Alas, my lord, if I had not been so prodigal, I had not been so poor!"

The Persians had a mode of establishing copyright the most secure of any contrivance with which we are acquainted. The law of the ghaselle, or shorter ode, requires that the poet insert his name in the last stanza. Almost every one of several hundreds of poems of Hafiz contains his name thus interwoven more or less closely with the subject of the piece. It is itself a test of skill, as this self-naming is not quite easy. We remember but two or three examples in English poetry: that of Chaucer, in the "House of Fame"; Jonson's epitaph on his son,—

"Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry";

and Cowley's,—

"The melancholy Cowley lay."

But it is easy to Hafiz. It gives him the opportunity of the most playful self-assertion, always gracefully, sometimes almost in the fun of Falstaff, sometimes with feminine delicacy. He tells us, "The angels in heaven were lately learning his last pieces." He says, "The fishes shed their pearls, out of desire and longing, as soon as the ship of Hafiz swims the deep."

  "Out of the East, and out of the West,    no man understands me;  Oh, the happier I, who confide to none but    the wind!  This morning heard I how the lyre of the    stars resounded,  'Sweeter tones have we heard from Hafiz!'"

Again,—

"I heard the harp of the planet Venus, and it said in the early morning, 'I am the disciple of the sweet-voiced Hafiz!'"

And again,—

"When Hafiz sings, the angels hearken, and Anaitis, the leader of the starry host, calls even the Messiah in heaven out to the dance."

"No one has unveiled thoughts like Hafiz, since the locks of the Word-bride were first curled."

  "Only he despises the verse of Hafiz who  is not himself by nature noble."

But we must try to give some of these poetic flourishes the metrical form which they seem to require:—

  "Fit for the Pleiads' azure chord  The songs I sung, the pearls I bored."

Another:—

  "I have no hoarded treasure,     Yet have I rich content;  The first from Allah to the Shah,    The last to Hafiz went."

Another:—

  "High heart, O Hafiz! though not thine    Fine gold and silver ore;  More worth to thee the gift of song,    And the clear insight more."

Again:—

  "Thou foolish Hafiz! say, do churls  Know the worth of Oman's pearls?  Give the gem which dims the moon  To the noblest, or to none."

Again:—

  "O Hafiz! speak not of thy need;    Are not these verses thine?  Then all the poets are agreed,    No man can less repine."

He asserts his dignity as bard and inspired man of his people. To the vizier returning from Mecca he says,—

"Boast not rashly, prince of pilgrims, of thy fortune, Thou hast indeed seen the temple; but I, the Lord of the temple. Nor has any man inhaled from the musk-bladder of the merchant, or from the musky morning-wind, that sweet air which I am permitted to breathe every hour of the day."

And with still more vigor in the following lines:—

  "Oft have I said, I say it once more,  I, a wanderer, do not stray from myself.  I am a kind of parrot; the mirror is holden to me;  What the Eternal says, I stammering say again.  Give me what you will; I eat thistles as roses,  And according to my food I grow and I give.  Scorn me not, but know I have the pearl,  And am only seeking one to receive it."

And his claim has been admitted from the first. The muleteers and camel-drivers, on their way through the desert, sing snatches of his songs, not so much for the thought, as for their joyful temper and tone; and the cultivated Persians know his poems by heart. Yet Hafiz does not appear to have set any great value on his songs, since his scholars collected them for the first time after his death.

In the following poem the soul is figured as the Phoenix alighting on the Tree of Life:—

  "My phoenix long ago secured    His nest in the sky-vault's cope;  In the body's cage immured,    He is weary of life's hope.  "Round and round this heap of ashes    Now flies the bird amain,  But in that odorous niche of heaven    Nestles the bird again.  "Once flies he upward, he will perch    On Tuba's golden bough;  His home is on that fruited arch    Which cools the blest below.  "If over this world of ours    His wings my phoenix spread,  How gracious falls on land and sea    The soul refreshing shade!  "Either world inhabits he,    Sees oft below him planets roll;  His body is all of air compact,    Of Allah's love his soul."

Here is an ode which is said to be a favorite with all educated Persians:—

  "Come!—the palace of heaven rests on aëry pillars,—  Come, and bring me wine; our days are wind.  I declare myself the slave of that masculine soul  Which ties and alliance on earth once forever renounces.  Told I thee yester-morn how the Iris of heaven  Brought to me in my cup a gospel of joy?  O high-flying falcon! the Tree of Life is thy perch;  This nook of grief fits thee ill for a nest.  Hearken! they call to thee down from the ramparts of heaven;  I cannot divine what holds thee here in a net.  I, too, have a counsel for thee; oh, mark it and keep it,  Since I received the same from the Master above:  Seek not for faith or for truth in a world of light-minded girls;  A thousand suitors reckons this dangerous bride.  This jest [of the world], which tickles me, leave to my vagabond self.  Accept whatever befalls; uncover thy brow from thy locks;  Neither to me nor to thee was option imparted;  Neither endurance nor truth belongs to the laugh of the rose.  The loving nightingale mourns;—cause enow for mourning;—  Why envies the bird the streaming verses of Hafiz?  Know that a god bestowed on him eloquent speech."

Here is a little epitaph that might have come from Simonides:—

  "Bethink, poor heart, what bitter kind of jest    Mad Destiny this tender stripling played:  For a warm breast of ivory to his breast,    She laid a slab of marble on his head."

The cedar, the cypress, the palm, the olive, and fig-tree, and the birds that inhabit them, and the garden flowers, are never wanting in these musky verses, and are always named with effect. "The willows," he says, "bow themselves to every wind, out of shame for their unfruitfulness." We may open anywhere on a floral catalogue.

  "By breath of beds of roses drawn,    I found the grove in the morning pure,  In the concert of the nightingales    My drunken brain to cure.  "With unrelated glance    I looked the rose in the eye;  The rose in the hour of gloaming    Flamed like a lamp hard-by.  "She was of her beauty proud,    And prouder of her youth,  The while unto her flaming heart    The bulbul gave his truth.  "The sweet narcissus closed    Its eye, with passion pressed;  The tulips out of envy burned    Moles in their scarlet breast.  "The lilies white prolonged    Their sworded tongue to the smell;  The clustering anemones    Their pretty secrets tell."

Presently we have,—

  –"All day the rain  Bathed the dark hyacinths in vain,  The flood may pour from morn till night  Nor wash the pretty Indians white."

And so onward, through many a page.

The following verse of Omar Chiam seems to belong to Hafiz:—

  "Each spot where tulips prank their state  Has drunk the life-blood of the great;  The violets yon fields which stain  Are moles of beauties Time hath slain."

As might this picture of the first days of Spring, from Enweri:—

  "O'er the garden water goes the wind alone    To rasp and to polish the cheek of the wave;  The fire is quenched on the dear hearth-stone,  But it burns again on the tulips brave."

Friendship is a favorite topic of the Eastern poets, and they have matched on this head the absoluteness of Montaigne.

Hafiz says,—

"Thou learnest no secret until thou knowest friendship; since to the unsound no heavenly knowledge enters."

Ibn Jemin writes thus:—

  "Whilst I disdain the populace,  I find no peer in higher place.  Friend is a word of royal tone,  Friend is a poem all alone.  Wisdom is like the elephant,  Lofty and rare inhabitant:  He dwells in deserts or in courts;  With hucksters he has no resorts."

Dschami says,—

  "A friend is he, who, hunted as a foe,    So much the kindlier shows him than before;  Throw stones at him, or ruder javelins throw,    He builds with stone and steel a firmer floor."

Of the amatory poetry of Hafiz we must be very sparing in our citations, though it forms the staple of the "Divan." He has run through the whole gamut of passion,—from the sacred, to the borders, and over the borders, of the profane. The same confusion of high and low, the celerity of flight and allusion which our colder muses forbid, is habitual to him. From the plain text,—

  "The chemist of love    Will this perishing mould,  Were it made out of mire,    Transmute into gold,"—

or, from another favorite legend of his chemistry,—

  "They say, through patience, chalk    Becomes a ruby stone;  Ah, yes, but by the true heart's blood    The chalk is crimson grown,"—

he proceeds to the celebration of his passion; and nothing in his religious or in his scientific traditions is too sacred or too remote to afford a token of his mistress. The Moon thought she knew her own orbit well enough; but when she saw the curve on Zuleika's cheek, she was at a loss:—

  "And since round lines are drawn    My darling's lips about,  The very Moon looks puzzled on,    And hesitates in doubt  If the sweet curve that rounds thy mouth  Be not her true way to the South."

His ingenuity never sleeps:—

  "Ah, could I hide me in my song,  To kiss thy lips from which it flows!"—

and plays in a thousand pretty courtesies:—

  "Fair fall thy soft heart!    A good work wilt thou do?  Oh, pray for the dead    Whom thine eyelashes slew!"

And what a nest has he found for his bonny bird to take up her abode in!—

  "They strew in the path of kings and czars    Jewels and gems of price;  But for thy head I will pluck down stars,    And pave thy way with eyes.  "I have sought for thee a costlier dome    Than Mahmoud's palace high,  And thou, returning, find thy home    In the apple of Love's eye."

Nor shall Death snatch her from his pursuit:—

  "If my darling should depart    And search the skies for prouder friends,  God forbid my angry heart    In other love should seek amends!  "When the blue horizon's hoop    Me a little pinches here,  On the instant I will die    And go find thee in the sphere."

Then we have all degrees of passionate abandonment:—

  "I know this perilous love-lane    No whither the traveller leads,  Yet my fancy the sweet scent of    Thy tangled tresses feeds.  "In the midnight of thy locks,    I renounce the day;  In the ring of thy rose-lips,    My heart forgets to pray."

And sometimes his love rises to a religious sentiment:—

  "Plunge in yon angry waves,    Renouncing doubt and care;  The flowing of the seven broad seas    Shall never wet thy hair.  "Is Allah's face on thee    Bending with love benign,  And thou not less on Allah's eye    O fairest! turnest thine."

We add to these fragments of Hafiz a few specimens from other poets.

CHODSCHU KERMANI

THE EXILE  "In Farsistan the violet spreads    Its leaves to the rival sky,—  I ask, How far is the Tigris flood,    And the vine that grows thereby?  "Except the amber morning wind,    Not one saluted me here;  There is no man in all Bagdad    To offer the exile cheer.  "I know that thou, O morning wind,    O'er Kerman's meadow blowest,  And thou, heart-warming nightingale,    My father's orchard knowest.  "Oh, why did partial Fortune    From that bright land banish me?  So long as I wait in Bagdad,    The Tigris is all I see.  "The merchant hath stuffs of price,    And gems from the sea-washed strand,  And princes offer me grace    To stay in the Syrian land:  "But what is gold for but for gifts?    And dark without love is the day;  And all that I see in Bagdad    Is the Tigris to float me away."

NISAMI

  "While roses bloomed along the plain,  The nightingale to the falcon said,  'Why, of all birds, must thou be dumb?  With closed mouth thou utterest,  Though dying, no last word to man.  Yet sitt'st thou on the hand of princes,  And feedest on the grouse's breast,  Whilst I, who hundred thousand jewels  Squander in a single tone,  Lo! I feed myself with worms,  And my dwelling is the thorn.'—  The falcon answered, 'Be all ear:  I, experienced in affairs,  See fifty things, say never one;  But thee the people prizes not,  Who, doing nothing, say'st a thousand.  To me, appointed to the chase,  The king's hand gives the grouse's breast;  Whilst a chatterer like thee  Must gnaw worms in the thorn. Farewell!'"

The following passages exhibit the strong tendency of the Persian poets to contemplative and religious poetry and to allegory.

ENWERI

BODY AND SOUL  "A painter in China once painted a hall;—  Such a web never hung on an emperor's wall;—  One half from his brush with rich colors did run,  The other he touched with a beam of the sun;  So that all which delighted the eye in one side,  The same, point for point, in the other replied.  "In thee, friend, that Tyrian chamber is found;  Thine the star-pointing roof, and the base on the ground:  Is one half depicted with colors less bright?  Beware that the counterpart blazes with light!"

IBN JEMIN

  "I read on the porch of a palace bold    In a purple tablet letters cast,—  'A house, though a million winters old,    A house of earth comes down at last;  Then quarry thy stones from the crystal All,  And build the dome that shall not fall.'"

"What need," cries the mystic Feisi, "of palaces and tapestry? What need even of a bed?

  "The eternal Watcher, who doth wake    All night in the body's earthen chest,  Will of thine arms a pillow make,    And a holster of thy breast."

A stanza of Hilali on a Flute is a luxury of idealism:—

  "Hear what, now loud, now low, the pining flute complains,    Without tongue, yellow-cheeked, full of winds that wail and sigh,  Saying, 'Sweetheart, the old mystery remains,    If I am I, thou thou, or thou art I.'"

Ferideddin Attar wrote the "Bird Conversations," a mystical tale, in which the birds, coming together to choose their king, resolve on a pilgrimage to Mount Kaf, to pay their homage to the Simorg. From this poem, written five hundred years ago, we cite the following passage, as a proof of the identity of mysticism in all periods. The tone is quite modern. In the fable, the birds were soon weary of the length and difficulties of the way, and at last almost all gave out. Three only persevered, and arrived before the throne of the Simorg.

  "The bird-soul was ashamed;  Their body was quite annihilated;  They had cleaned themselves from the dust,  And were by the light ensouled.  What was, and was not,—the Past,—  Was wiped out from their breast.  The sun from near-by beamed  Clearest light into their soul;  The resplendence of the Simorg beamed  As one back from all three.  They knew not, amazed, if they  Were either this or that.  They saw themselves all as Simorg,  Themselves in the eternal Simorg.  When to the Simorg up they looked,  They beheld him among themselves;  And when they looked on each other,  They saw themselves in the Simorg.  A single look grouped the two parties.  The Simorg emerged, the Simorg vanished,  This in that, and that in this,  As the world has never heard.  So remained they, sunk in wonder,  Thoughtless in deepest thinking,  And quite unconscious of themselves.  Speechless prayed they to the Highest  To open this secret,  And to unlock Thou and We.  There came an answer without tongue.—  'The Highest is a sun-mirror;  Who comes to Him sees himself therein,  Sees body and soul, and soul and body:  When you came to the Simorg,  Three therein appeared to you,  And, had fifty of you come,  So had you seen yourselves as many.  Him has none of us yet seen.  Ants see not the Pleiades.  Can the gnat grasp with his teeth  The body of the elephant?  What you see is He not;  What you hear is He not.  The valleys which you traverse,  The actions which you perform,  They lie under our treatment  And among our properties.  You as three birds are amazed,  Impatient, heartless, confused:  Far over you am I raised,  Since I am in act Simorg.  Ye blot out my highest being,  That ye may find yourselves on my throne;  Forever ye blot out yourselves,  As shadows in the sun. Farewell!'"

Among the religious customs of the dervises, it seems, is an astronomical dance, in which the dervis imitates the movements of the heavenly bodies by spinning on his own axis, whilst, at the same time, he revolves round the sheikh in the centre, representing the sun; and as he spins, he sings the song of Seid Nimetollah of Kuhistan:—

  "Spin the ball! I reel, I hum,  Nor head from foot can I discern,  Nor my heart from love of mine,  Nor the wine-cup from the wine.  All my doing, all my leaving,  Reaches not to my perceiving.  Lost in whirling spheres I rove,  And know only that I love.  "I am seeker of the stone,  Living gem of Solomon;  From the shore of souls arrived,  In the sea of sense I dived;  But what is land, or what is wave,  To me who only jewel crave?  Love's the air-fed fire intense,  My heart is the frankincense;  As the rich aloes flames, I glow,  Yet the censer cannot know.  I'm all-knowing, yet unknowing;  Stand not, pause not, in my going.  "Ask not me, as Muftis can  To recite the Alcoran;  Well I love the meaning sweet,—  I tread the book beneath my feet.  "Lo! the God's love blazes higher,  Till all difference expire.  What are Moslems? what are Giaours?  All are Love's, and all are ours.  I embrace the true believers,  But I reck not of deceivers.  Firm to heaven my bosom clings,  Heedless of inferior things;  Down on earth there, underfoot,  What men chatter know I not."* * * * *

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE

EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

–—I think, Sir,—said the divinity-student,—you must intend that for one of the sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Boston you were speaking of the other day.

I thank you, my young friend,—was my reply,—but I must say something better than that, before I could pretend to fill out the number.

–—The schoolmistress wanted to know how many of these sayings there were on record, and what, and by whom said.

–—Why, let us see,—there is that one of Benjamin Franklin, "the great Bostonian," after whom this lad was named. To be sure, he said a great many wise things,—and I don't feel sure he didn't borrow this,—he speaks as if it were old. But then he applied it so neatly!—

"He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another than he whom you yourself have obliged."

Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my friend, the Historian, in one of his flashing moments:—

"Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries."

To these must certainly be added that other saying of one of the wittiest of men:—

"Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris."

–—The divinity-student looked grave at this, but said nothing.

The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she didn't think the wit meant any irreverence. It was only another way of saying, Paris is a heavenly place after New York or Boston.

A jaunty-looking person, who had come in with the young fellow they call John,—evidently a stranger,—said there was one more wise man's saying that he had heard; it was about our place, but he didn't know who said it.—A civil curiosity was manifested by the company to hear the fourth wise saying. I heard him distinctly whispering to the young fellow who brought him to dinner, Shall I tell it? To which the answer was, Go ahead!—Well,—he said,—this was what I heard:—

"Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man, if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar."

Sir,—said I,—I am gratified with your remark. It expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I have sometimes heard uttered with malignant dulness. The satire of the remark is essentially true of Boston,—and of all other considerable—and inconsiderable—places with which I have had the privilege of being acquainted. Cockneys think London is the only place in the world. Frenchmen—you remember the line about Paris, the Court, the World, etc.—I recollect well, by the way, a sign in that city which ran thus: "Hotel de l'Univers et des États Unis"; and as Paris is the universe to a Frenchman, of course the United States are outside of it.—"See Naples and then die."—It is quite as bad with smaller places. I have been about, lecturing, you know, and have found the following propositions to hold true of all of them.

1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city.

2. If more than fifty years have passed since its foundation, it is affectionately styled by the inhabitants the "good old town of"– (whatever its name may happen to be).

3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes together to listen to a stranger is invariably declared to be a "remarkably intelligent audience."

4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable to longevity.

5. It contains several persons of vast talent little known to the world. (One or two of them, you may perhaps chance to remember, sent short pieces to the "Paetolian" some time since, which were "respectfully declined.")