Oh, happy, happy bird that nesteth there!
NOTES
TO
THE POEMS FROM EASTERN SOURCES.
Page 3.
ALEXANDER AT THE GATES OF PARADISE.
See Eisenmenger’s “Entdecktes Judenthum,” v. ii. p. 321, with whom I trust that my readers will not agree, for he has scarcely patience to finish this “narrische Talmudische Fabel,” as he styles it. It reappears, slightly modified, in the Persian tradition, according to which Alexander, having conquered the world, determined to seek out the fountain of life. See the following note. In like manner, in the Christian poems of the middle ages, Alexander is made to recognise at last the vanity and emptiness of all the glory which he has won, and is hardly turned from his purpose of going forth at last in search of the lost Paradise. See Rosenkranz “Gesch. d. Deutschen Poesie in Mittelalter,” p. 367. Very notable is this making of Alexander, and no other—the man from whom the confession comes, that the world has not that which can truly satisfy man’s spirit, but that he still yearns for something beyond. It is like, in the Scripture, the same confession coming from the lips of Solomon; for in each case the experiment has been made under the most favourable circumstances: so that in one case, as in the other, it may be asked, “What can the man do that cometh after the king?”
P. 11.
CHIDHER’S WELL.
Of Chidher’s Well, the Eastern λουτρον παλιγγενεσιας, Von Hammer, in his very interesting introduction to his “History of Persian Poetry,” gives a good account. Among other things he says, “Cotemporary with Moses lived the Prophet Chiser, of whom some hold that he is the same with Elias, while others altogether distinguish them. He is one of the chief personages of Eastern Mythology, the ever-ready helper of the oppressed, the Genius of spring, the deliverer in peril, the admonisher of princes, the avenger of unrighteousness, the guide through the wilderness of the world, and, finally, the ever-youthful guardian of the fountain of life. As such he revives the youth of men, and beasts, and plants, gives back lost beauty, and in spring arrays the dead earth with its fresh garments of green. His fountain bestows on whosoever drinks it eternal beauty, youth, and wisdom. What wonder then that all mortals with burning desire seek it, though as yet not one, not even Alexander, the conqueror of the world, who, in quest of it, undertook an expedition into the land of darkness, has found it!” Probably this, his journey through the land of darkness, is but a mythic form of his expedition through the Libyan desert to the temple of Jupiter Ammon.
On this poem I may observe, that it is the first of several in the volume written with an arrangement of rhyme hardly familiar to the English reader, which yet is that of a great part, as I believe, of the lyric poetry of the East, and which may not, perhaps, be unworthy of a place among us. According to the laws of the Ghazel,—for poems in this metre are so entitled,—the two first lines must rhyme, and then this rhyme repeats itself in the second line of each succeeding couplet, which is, in fact, a new stanza, till the end of the poem,—the termination of the first line in each of these following couplets being left free. This single rule of the one repeated rhyme being observed, the Ghazel admits otherwise of the greatest possible variety; it may be composed, as is this present, in short trochaics, in longer or shorter iambics, or, in fact, in lines of whatsoever length or arrangement of syllables the poet will. In Germany, the Ghazel has been perfectly domesticated. Rückert and Count Platen are, I believe, considered to have cultivated it with the greatest success.