11
With me along the strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and
Sultán is forgot--
And Peace to
Mahmúd on his golden Throne!
12
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
Oh, Wilderness were
Paradise enow!
13
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the
Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah,
take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
14
Look to the blowing
Rose about us—"Lo,
Laughing," she says, "into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
15
And those who husbanded the Golden grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
16
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two--is gone.
17
Think, in this batter'd
Caravanserai
Whose Portals are alternate
Night and Day,
How
Sultán after Sultán with his Pomp
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.
18
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The courts where
Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And
Bahrám, that great Hunter--the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.
19
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried
Caesar bled;
That every
Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.
20
And this reviving Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
>>>
FitzGerald’s notes
13. A Drum--beaten outside a
Palace.
14. That is, the Rose's Golden Centre.
18.
Persepolis: call'd also
Takht-i-Jam-shyd--THE
THRONE OF JAMSHYD, "King Splendid," of the mythical
Peshdadian Dynasty, and supposed (according to the
Shah-nama) to have been founded and built by him. Others refer it to the Work of the
Genie King,
Jan Ibn Jan--who also built the
Pyramids--before the time of
Adam.
BAHRAM GUR.—
Bahram of the Wild Ass--a
Sassanian Sovereign--had also his Seven Castles (like the King of
Bohemia!) each of a different Colour: each with a Royal Mistress within; each of whom tells him a Story, as told in one of the most famous Poems of
Persia, written by
Amir Khusraw: all these Sevens also figuring (according to Eastern
Mysticism) the
Seven Heavens; and perhaps the Book itself that Eighth, into which the mystical Seven transcend, and within which they revolve. The Ruins of Three of those Towers are yet shown by the Peasantry; as also the Swamp in which Bahram sunk, like the Master of
Ravenswood, while pursuing his
Gur.
The Palace that to Heav'n his pillars threw, And Kings the forehead on his threshold drew-- I saw the solitary
Ringdove there, And "Coo, coo, coo," she cried; and "Coo, coo, coo."
This
Quatrain Mr.
Binning found, among several of
Hafiz and others, inscribed by some stray hand among the ruins of Persepolis. The Ringdove's ancient
Pehlevi Coo, Coo, Coo, signifies also in Persian "Where? Where? Where?" In
Attar's "
Bird-parliament" she is reproved by the Leader of the Birds for sitting still, and for ever harping on that one note of lamentation for her lost
Yusuf.
Apropos of Omar's Red Roses in Stanza xix, I am reminded of an old English Superstition, that our
Anemone Pulsatilla, or purple "
Pasque Flower," (which grows plentifully about the
Fleam Dyke, near
Cambridge,) grows only where
Danish Blood has been spilt.