And then they said so much · with words so smooth and fair,
And promised him so faithfully · with words of pious care,
That he gave them up his child; · but bade them first beware,
And bring him quickly back again, · unharmed by any snare.[153]
When the brothers have consummated their treason, and sold Joseph to a caravan of Egyptian merchants, the story goes on much as it does in the Koran. The fair Zuleikha, or Zuleia, who answers to Potiphar’s wife in the Hebrew Scriptures, and who figures largely in Mohammedan poetry, fills a space more ample than usual in the fancies of the present poem. Joseph, too, is a more considerable personage. He is adopted as the king’s son, and made a king in the land; and the dreams of the real king, the years of plenty and famine, the journeyings of the brothers to Egypt, their recognition by Joseph, and his message to Jacob, with the grief of the latter that Benjamin did not return, at which the manuscript breaks off, are much amplified, in the Oriental manner, and made to sound like passages from “Antar,” or the “Arabian Nights,” rather than from the touching and beautiful story to which we have been accustomed from our childhood.
Among the inventions of the author is a conversation which the wolf—who is brought in by his false brethren, as the animal that had killed Joseph—holds with Jacob.[154] Another is the Eastern fancy, that the measure by which Joseph distributed the corn, and which was made of gold and precious stones, would, when put to his ear, inform him whether the persons present were guilty of falsehood to him.[155] But the following incident, which, like that of Joseph’s parting in a spirit of tender forgiveness from his brethren[156] when they sold him, is added to the narrative of the Koran, will better illustrate the general tone of the poem, as well as the general powers of the poet.
On the first night after the outrage, Jusuf, as he is called in the poem, when travelling along in charge of a negro, passes a cemetery on a hill-side where his mother lies buried.
And when the negro heeded not, · that guarded him behind,
From off the camel Jusuf sprang, · on which he rode confined,
And hastened, with all speed, · his mother’s grave to find,