Schiller he could not so well understand, and often the attempt adequately to translate this poet had to be given up in despair. However, Mirza Shaffy admitted that some of his poems had substance in them. Uhland and Geibel were not much to his mind. One day, Bodenstedt translated into Tartar a song by the latter, which we in our turn thus render into English:
The silent water lily
Springs from the earth below,
The leaves all greenly glitter,
The cup is white as snow.
The moon her golden radiance
Pours from the heavens down,
Pours all her beams of glory
This virgin flower to crown.
And, in the azure water,
A swan of dazzling white
Floats longing round the lily,
That trances all his sight.
Ah low he sings, ah sadly,
Fainting with sweetest pain;
O lily, snow white lily,
Hear'st thou the dying strain?
Mirza Shaffy cast the song aside, with the words, "A foolish swan!"
"Don't the song please you?" asked the translator.
"The conclusion is foolish," replied the Tartar; "what does the swan gain by fainting?—he only suffers himself, and does no good to the rose. I would have ended—
"Then in his beak he takes it,
And bears it with him home."