CHAPTER XVI.
When the Nawab had concluded his tale, much discourse ensued regarding the unusual occurrences he had related and their significance.
"And," said the Rajah, who was a lover of verse, "how true it is that poetry lends an illusive charm to conceptions ordinary in themselves, like a lovely screen which bestows a grace on the scantiness it only half conceals. Poetry hath an advantage over prose."
"But an advantage compensated on the other hand by the elusiveness of its lightsome spirit, its grace so easily lost," said a poet who wrote songs for the pleasure of the Court. "The charm of poetry," he said sadly, "is too ethereal to live in sordid company, and perishes oft in the handling that had only proved the vigour of prose."
It is a primary characteristic of poetry that it cannot be translated. The most that a translator can do is to express in another tongue the main thought embodied, and enshrine it in a new poem. I have in changing some dainty wind-blossom of song from one dialect to another of the same language witnessed its instant transition into the realms of prose, and regarded the metamorphosis with the guilty awe of one who deals unwittingly in baleful magic.
And now they spoke of the marvellous properties of precious stones, a topic suggested, no doubt, by the story-teller's mention of a gleaming jewel, and probably still more by the unspoken anxiety with which many noted the non-return of the party who had gone in quest of the Sapphire.
"The diamond is possessed of many occult powers," said a courtier.