Indian Antiquary Vol 51

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 66

58
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
And again, in a poem of noble blank verse, there is a varied refrain running through it in rhyme which speaks with no uncertain voice. Its title is Lebanus to B.C.R.
O my Love, how long wilt thou continue
Fondly nursing every dreaming Hour? Our Lebanus, O my Love, is calling.. Yea, and waiting in his ancient Tower.
O my Love, how long wilt hither tarry, Making toys of Time's discarded hours? Fair Lebanus, O my Love, is calling,
Yea, and waiting in his House of Flowers.
O my Love, how long wilt hit her tarry,
Wilt dally with the web of Time, how long?" Lone Lebanus, O my Love, is calling,
Yea, and waiting in his House of Song.
O my Love, how long wilt hit her tarry Weaving gossamer of day and night? Sad Lebanus, O my Love, is calling,
Yea, and waiting in his House of Light. Despite its English form and its author's mastery of English versification, the book is Oriental from end to end in feeling and spirit.
SHE WENT OUT SINGING.
She went out singing, and the poppies still Crowd round her door awaiting her return; She went out dancing, and the doleful rill Lingers beneath her walls hor news to learn. Their love is but a seed of what she has sown; Their grief is but a shadow of my own.
O Tomb, O Tomb! did Zahra's beauty fade, Or dost thou still preserve it in thy gloom? O Tomb, thou art not firmament nor glade, Yet in thee shines the moon and lilies bloom. And the poem "Hanem" reads like a clever translation, so thoroughly Eastern is the whole idea and expression:
Hanem, we must have met before, Perhaps a thousand years ago;
I still remember when I tore Your virgin veil of lunar snow. By Allah, I remember, too,
When, sousing in my mortal bain, You bit my lip and said, "Adieu,
When shall we, Syrian, meet again?"
It will have been discovered that in the lines quoted from" She went out singing," the line, "Their love is but a seed of what she has sown,"
[ MARCH, 1922
does not scan correctly with the rest of the lines. Herein lies my one criticism of form. There is too much of this false rhythm in the book, and Mr. Rihani is such a master of rhyme and rhythm and language that one cannot put the fact down to anything but the evil effect of modern taste in verse which, like the discords so much affected by the modern composers of music, is but "the union of inharmonious sounds."
Apart from what I may call the purely poetical experience of emotion in this book, Mr. Kihani has much serious purpose in what he has writtenmuch that helps the Western to understand the Eastern mind. That this is his object is clearly expressed in many places: notably in the last of four fine sonnets to Andalusia, where Moor and Christ fan-East and West-fought so hard a fight:--
AL-ZAHRA.
Not with the Orient glamor of her pleasures, Nor with fond rhapsodies of prayer or song Could she her sovereign reign a day prolong: Not in the things of beauty that man measures By the variable humor of his leisures,
Or by the credibilities that change
From faith to fantasy to rumor strange, Was she the mistress of immortal treasures. But when the holy shrine Europa sought, Herself of sin and witchcraft to assoil, The sovereigns of Al-Zahra maxims wrought And Averroes burned his midnight oil;Arabia, the bearer of the light, Still sparkles in the diadem of Night.
Again, in a poem entitled "The Two Brothers," he definitely tells us in a footnote, "I have tried to embody in these stanzas the idea shared partly by the Sufi, that God and the Universe are one." This is of such interest to Oriental scholars that I do not hesitate to quote it in full:
In the grotto the forest designed,
Where the fire-fly first dreamed of the sun And the cricket first chirped to the blind Zoophyte, in the cave of the mind We were born and our cradle is one. We are brothers: together we dwelt Unknown and unheard and unseen For aeons; together we felt The urge of the forces that melt
The rocks into willowy green. For aeons together we drifted
In the molten abysses of flame, While the Cycles our heritage sifted From the vapor and ooze, and uplifted
The image that now bears our name.