Indian Antiquary Vol 08

Author(s): Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 46

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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(JANUARY, 1879.
When, like a pearl upon a bosom fair,
"My wrath is kindled for the sake The glistening dewdrop on the sapling lies.
Of Courtesy, whose lord thou art : There the young flowerets with sweet perfume
For thee, I take it so to heart, blow;
No umbrage for myself I take. There feathery palms their pendent clusters hold, But be thy treatment what it will, Like foxes' brushes waving to and fro;
I cannot this affront forget; There every evening comes the after-glow,
I am not used to insult yet, Tipping the leaflets with its liquid gold.”
And blush at its remembrance still." Another piece is a farewell, full of quiet pathos He is lese merciful to a ridiculous old coquette, and truth; some of our readers must have often
to whom he says :witnessed the groves without the gate used as "I see you walking in the street in veils of the halting and starting points of caravans, amid muslin dressed, the bustle of men and beasts :
Like an old and worthless volume with a new
and handsome back; Good-bye.
When I ask what is beneath them, people set “The camelmen were on the move;
my mind at rest, The fatal hour was drawing nigh;
For they say it is a lot of bones put in a leathern But ere we went away my love
sack." Came up to bid a last good-bye.'
And scorn and courage are both well shown in She dared not breathe the word 'farewell,'
the vigorous lines which one would willingly supLest spiteful folk should overhear.
pose to have been written while his master was When lovers have a tale to tell,
captive in Kerek to a treacherous kingman, his There always is a listener near.
adherents fled or rebellious, and the faithful I wept, and watched her as she took
poet struggling to maintain the cause that seemed Some paces onward weeping sore,
hopeless :Then turned to give one longing look
"Shall I linger any longer where at merit men And whisper a 'good-bye' once more."
demur, Many of the pieces in this volumo are mere frag- Where they deem a cur a lion, where a lion's like ments, apparently impromptu, or at least compos- & corp ed on slight occasions, such as answers to letters,
Many a precious pearl of poetry in their honour invitations to dinner, and the like. The thought, bad I strung; though not very deep, is almost always happy, as By my life, the gems were wasted which before in the following acknowledgment of a note :
such swine I flung. "Your letter came, and I declare
Well I the world is not so narrow bat a man bis My longing it expresses quite;
way may win, Methinks my heart was standing there,
And the doors are open widely, if he choose to Dictating to you what to write."
enter in. The volume, however, is not entirely filled I have that within my bosom tells me that with these graceful trifles. Sympathy and manly success is near, consolation find fit expression in the short poem And Ambition gives me earnest of a glorious addressed to his friend Sherif-ed-din upon the career." death of a younger brother. We regret, however, The extracts given above are all taken, almost that Professor Palmer should have headed it "In at hazard, from the few first pages of Professor Memoriam," and adopted in his translation the Palmer's translation, which contains about 350 metres of Tennyson's famous poem. The compari- pieces. Our readers can judge from this of the Bon provoked is, if not odious, at least unnecessary; amount and value of his labours. If one may though the Arab poet has no cause to fear it, the draw any augury from the extraordinary though less that his grief is expressed within the moderate tardy success of a much less important work limit of seven stanzas. Zoheir could write sharply, (Mr. Fitzgerald's translation of 'Umar Khayyam's too, when he pleased, though his stern moods are Rubaiyyat), they onght to meet with some recogfew, and his wrath tempered by the dignified self- nition from the general public; and to the restraint of an Eastern gentleman, as in the Orientalist, and especially the student of Arabic, remonstrance addressed to a minister at whose these two volumes, the one containing the Arabic house he had been rudely repulsed, and to whom text, and the other the English version, will provo he says, in conclusion :
| as useful as interesting.
S. The allusion is to pendent fox-tails used to decorate onparisons of chargers,