From the “Poetry of the East.”

AS we enter the realm of Persian lyric poetry, we approach the most intoxicating cordials and the daintiest viands anywhere furnished at the world banquet of literature. The eye is inebriate at the sight of ruby vases filled with honey, and crystal goblets brimmed with thick-purpled wine, and golden baskets full of sliced pomegranates. The flavor of nectarines, tamarinds, and figs is on the tongue. If we lean from the balcony for relief, a breeze comes wafted over acres of roses, and the air is full of the odor of cloves and precious gums, sandalwood and cedar, frankincense forests, and cinnamon groves. A Persian poet of rich genius, who wrote but little, being asked why he did not produce more, replied: “I intended, as soon as I should reach the rose trees, to fill my lap and bring presents for my companions; but when I arrived there the fragrance of the roses so intoxicated me that the skirt of my robe slipped from my hands.” The true Persian poet, as Mirza Schaffy declares, in his songs burns sun, moon, and stars as sacrifice on the altar of beauty. Every kiss the maidens plant on his lips springs up as a song in his mouth. One describes a battlefield looking as if the earth were covered over with crimson tulips. The evening star is a moth, and the moon a lamp. A devotee in a dream heard the cherubs in heaven softly singing the poetry of Saadi, and saying, “This couplet of Saadi is worth the hymns of angel worship for a whole year.” Upon awakening he went to Saadi and found him reverently reciting the following lines:—

  The Persian seems born with a lyre in his hand and a song on his tongue. It is related of the celebrated poet, Abderrhaman, son of Hissân, that when an infant, being stung by a wasp, he ran to his father, crying in spontaneous verse:—

  The tones of the Persian harp are extremely tender and pathetic. They seem to sigh, Wherever sad Memory walks in the halls of the past, her step wakes the echoes of long-lost joys. They frequently accord with a strain like this:—

    Among the epic poets of Persia, Firdousi is chief; among the romantic poets, Nisami; among the moral-didactic, Saadi; among the purely lyric, Hafiz; among the religious, Ferideddin Attar. In their respective provinces these indisputably and unapproached bear the palm.

  There are three objects as famous in Persian poetry as the Holy Grail in the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. One is Jemschid’s cup. This was a magic goblet with seven circling lines dividing it into seven compartments, corresponding to the seven worlds. Filling it with wine, Jemschid had only to look in it and behold all the events of the creation, past, present, and future:—

  Firdousi has described Jemschid upon a certain occasion consulting this cup:—

  Another is Solomon’s signet ring. Such were the incredible virtues of this little talisman, that the touch of it exorcised all evil spirits, commanded the instant presence and services of the Genii, laid every secret bare, and gave its possessor almost unlimited powers of knowledge, dominion, and performance. The third is Iskander’s mirror. By looking on this the future was revealed, unknown climes brought to view, and whatever its owner wished was made visible. By means of this glass, Alexander—for the Oriental “Iskander” is no other—accomplished the expedition to Paradise, so celebrated in the mythic annals of the East. There is scarcely an end to the allusions and anecdotes referring to these three wondrous objects….

  Furthermore, there are five standard allegories of hapless love which the poets of Persia have wrought out in innumerable forms of passionate imagery and beauteous versification. The constant Nightingale loves the Rose, and when she perishes, his laments pain the evening air and fill grove and garden with heart-breaking melodies:—

  The Lily loves the Sun, and opens the dazzling white of her bosom to his greeting smile as he rises; and when he sets, covers her face and droops her head, forlorn, all night. The Lotus loves the Moon; and soon as his silver light gilds the waters she lifts her snowy neck above the tide and sheds the perfume of her amorous breath over the waves, till shaming day ends her dalliance. The Ball loves the Bat, and still solicitingly returns, flying to meet him, however oft and cruelly repulsed and spurned. The Moth and the Taper are two fond lovers separated by the fierce flame. He draws her with resistless invitation: she flies with reckless resolve; the merciless flame devours her, and melts him away.

  From this rapid glance at the wealth of the Iranian bards, let us now turn, for a moment, to the Sufis. The circulating life-sap of Sufism is piety, its efflorescence is poetry, which it yields in spontaneous abundance of brilliant bloom. The Sufis are a sect, of comparatively modern origin, which sprouted from the trunk of Mohammedanism, where the mysticism of India was grafted into it, and was nourished in the passionate sluggishness of Eastern reverie by the soothing dreams and fanatic fires of that wondrous race and clime. They flourished chiefly in Persia, but rightfully claimed as virtual members of their sect the most distinguished religionists, philosophers, and poets of the whole Orient for thousands of years; because all these agreed with them in the fundamental principles of their system of thought, rules of life, and aims of aspiration. A detailed account of the Sufis may be found in Sir John Malcolm’s “History of Persia,” and a good sketch of their dogmas is presented in Tholuck’s “Sufism”; but the best exposition of their experience and literary expression is afforded by Tholuck’s “Anthology from the Oriental Mystics.” The Sufis are a sect of meditative devotees, whose absorption in spiritual contemplations and hallowed raptures is unparalleled, whose piety penetrates to a depth where the mind gropingly staggers among the bottomless roots of being, in mazes of wonder and delight, and reaches to a height where the soul loses itself among the roofless immensities of glory in a bedazzled and boundless ecstasy. As a specimen, read

    Their aim is a union with God so intimate that it becomes identity, wherein thought is an involuntary intuitive grasp and fruition of universal truth; and wherein feeling is a dissolving and infinite delirium filled with the perfect calmness of unfathomable bliss. For the gradual training of the soul unto the winning of this incomparable and last attainment, they have devised a system of means whose simplicity and complication, adapted completeness,—regular stages of initiation and gradations of experience, spiritual frictions and magnetisms, stimulants for some faculties, soporifics for others, diversified disciplines and educations for all,—are astonishingly fitted to lead the disciple regularly on to the marvelous result they desire. And it could scarcely fail of effect, if faithfully tried, even in the colder airs and on the more phlegmatic natures of the West. How finely drawn the subtle experience and beautiful thought in the following anecdote of Rabia, the celebrated Mohammedan saint! We give it as told after Tholuck by James Freeman Clarke.

    The passage through the classified degrees of attainment in the mystic life they call “the traveling by steps up to heaven.”

  The Sufi poets are innumerable, but their universally acknowledged head and master is the celebrated Mewlana Dschelaleddin Rumi, the greatest mystic poet of the whole Orient, the oracle of the devotees, the nightingale of the contemplative life, the lawgiver in piety, the founder of the principal order of Dervishes, and author of the “Mesnavi.” The “Mesnavi” is a vast and famous double-rhymed ascetic poem, an inexhaustible coffer of Sufi lore and gems. From the banks of the Ganges to the Bosporus it is the handbook of all Sufis, the law book and ritual of all the mystics. From this work, says Von Hammer, this volcanic eruption of inspiration breaks forth the inmost peculiarity of Oriental mysticism, a solitary self-direction towards the loftiest goal of perfection over the contemplative way of Divine Love. On the wings of the highest religious inspiration, which rises far beyond all outer forms of positive religion, adoring the Eternal Essence, in its completest abstraction from everything earthly, as the purest fountain of eternal light, soars Dschelaleddin, above suns and moons, above time and space, above creation and fate, beyond the primeval decrees of destiny, beyond the sentence of the last judgment, forth into infinitude, where he melts into unity with the Endless Being as endless worshiper, and into the Boundless Love as boundless lover, ever forgetful of himself, having the Absolute in view; and, instead of closing his poems, like other great poets, with his own name, he always makes the name of his mystic master the keystone to the diamond arch of his fire ghazels.

  The Sufi turns inward for his aims and joys, with a scornful superiority to all visible rituals. He says that one hour of secret meditation and silent love is of more avail than seventy thousand years of outward worship. When, with great toils and sufferings, Rabia had effected the pilgrimage to Mecca, and saw the people praying around the Caaba, she beat her breast and cried aloud:—

  When a knowledge of the Supreme has been attained, there is no need of ceremonies; when a soft, refreshing breeze blows from the south, there is no need of a fan. As an illustration of this phase may be perused the following fine poem translated by Professor Falconer. It may be fitly entitled:—

    Every consistent Sufi is an optimist, one who denies the reality of evil. In his poems he mingles the fighting limits of light and darkness, dissolves the rocky boundaries of right and wrong, and buries all clamorous distinctions beneath the level sea of pantheistic unity. All drops, however driven forth, scalded in deserts or frozen on mountains, belong to the ocean, and, by omnipotent attractions, will finally find their way home, to repose and flow with the tidal uniformity of the all-embracing deep. Vice and virtue, purity and corruption, birth and decay, cruelty and tenderness,—all antagonistic elements and processes are equally the manifestations and workings of God. From him all spirits proceeded, and to him they are ever returning; or in the temple, or on the gibbet, groaning in sinks of degraded sensuality and want, or exulting in palaces of refinement and splendor, they are equally climbing by irresistible affinities and propulsions towards their native seat in Deity.

  This optimist denial of the reality of evil is frequently brought out by the Sufi, with a sudden emphasis, an unflinching thoroughness, in forms and guises of mystic reason, wondrous beauty, and bewildering subtlety, which must astound a Christian moralist. The Sufi’s brain is a magazine of transcendent mysteries and prodigious conceits, his faith an ocean of dusky bliss, his illuminated tenderness a beacon of the Infinite Light.

  An important trait of the Sufi belief is contained in the idea, zealously held by them all, and suffusing most of their poetry, that death is ecstasy.

  Death plunges the heated, weary, thirsting soul into a flood of delicious relief and repose, the unalloyed and ceaseless fruition of a divine delight. The past was one sweet ocean of Divinity; the future is another; the present interposes, a blistering and dreary strand, between. To their hushed ear

  From their heavenly yearning breaks the exclamation: “Oh, the bliss of that day when I shall depart from this desolate mansion, and my soul shall find rest, and I shall follow the traces of my Beloved!” From their exhilarating anticipation of pleasure and glory yet untasted and unglimpsed behind the veil, rises the rejoiceful cry:—

  There are thoughts and sentiments in these poems which ought, however suggested, and wherever recognized, to smite us with subduing wonder, and to fill us with sympathetic longing; which ought magnetically to strike with opening life and desire that side of our souls which looks upon infinity and eternity, and wherethrough, in favored hours, we thrill to the visiting influences of boundless Mystery and nameless Love, with a rapture of calmness, a vision of heaven, a perfect communion of the Father confessing with electric shudders of awe and joy the motions of the Spirit, as God’s hand wanders solemnly among the chords of the heart.

  In conclusion, I will specify the principal traits which belong in a distinctive degree to Oriental poetry. The first one that attracts notice is an airy, winged, exultant liberty of spirit, an unimpeded largeness and ease of movement, and intense enthusiasm. This gives birth to extravagance. Compare in this respect the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments” with the “Waverley Novels.” Its lower form is a revelling or deliberate fancy, abounding in lawless conceits, sometimes puerile, sometimes amazing. “The bird of understanding hath fled from the nest of my brain.” “The sun in the zenith is a golden falcon hovering over his azure nest.” The higher form of this trait is the spontaneous transport of an inspired and free imagination, producing the most stupendous conceptions, infusing a divine soul through all dead substance, melting everything into its own molds, filling a new universe with new marvels of beauty and delight.