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"From the moment, when I heard the divine sentence, I have breathed into man a portion of my spirit,'

I was assured, that we were His, and He ours."

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'Rise, my soul; that I may pour thee forth on the pencil of that supreme Artist,

Who comprised in a turn of his compass all this wonderful
scenery!"

"The sum of our transactions, in this universe, is nothing:
Bring us the wine of devotion; for the possessions of this world
vanish."

"Shed, O Lord, from the cloud of heavenly guidance, one cheer-
ing shower,

Before the moment when I must rise up like a particle of dry dust!"

"Oh! the bliss of that day, when I shall depart from this desolate mansion;

Shall seek rest for my soul; and shall follow the traces of my beloved."

This mystical poetry, or its incarnation, Sufism, claims our attention a little longer; not only because the subject has hitherto been little attended to, but because our knowledge on this head çan alone enable us to understand, appreciate, and criticise the works of Hafiz. We have admitted that there are passages in his Odes which can be explained by the "mystery within mystery," but let the reader decide if the strong language of Sufism can be reconciled with the apparent meaning of a number of these verses :

"May the hand never shake, which gathered grapes!
May the foot never slip, which pressed them!"

"That poignant liquor, which the zealots call the mother of sin,
Is pleasanter and sweeter to me than the kisses of a maiden !"
"But for a little sanctity the Kaaba and the Temple would be
the same.

There can be no sanctity in a house free from virtue."

"I fear, that in the day of universal justice,

The holy bread of the Sheik will not prove superior to my ungodly liqour."

In the following couplet the Faithful finds an attack on his religion; but the mystery of the Sufis redeemed the poet's honor :"The priests who appear so devout before the altar and in the pulpit, behave far otherwise in private.

Why do not the preachers of repentance repent themselves? Perhaps they have no faith in a day of retribution, since their holy offices are so full of fraud and deceit."

These passages, and a thousand besides these, are explained with perfect ease without the assistance of any mystical philosophy, or of any system of philosophy save that of common sense. That Hafiz was a Sufi we cannot deny, and that he placed little or no reliance on the words of the Koran we can gather from his works. But we shall prove ourselves sadly ignorant of his works if we admit, what the Sufis have so long and so often affirmed with confidence, "To understand the songs of Hafiz the reader must dive into the well whence the Sufi alone draws the nectar of Truth." The language of "truth and soberness" is widely different from that of enthusiasm; there is belief for one and contempt for the other.

The poetry of Hafiz, as has been already remarked, bears little affinity to the productions of his predecessors. Rich in fancy, powerful in imagination, original and sublime, wild and glowing, the Ghuzls of the Persian Anacreon are the best of their kind in the Persian language. Transition, so pleasing in poetry and so intolerable in philosophy, is found in its happiest forms in the Odes of Hafiz. But to appreciate and understand his works, we should read them before the idiom of a foreign tongue has disfigured and tortured them. It would not be doing justice to the genius of this great poet, to test his merits after they have been sifted through the medium of a strange language and inadequate words.

The Odes of Hafiz are both grave and gay; he either moralises on the degeneracy of his age, on the vanity of the world, on the power of sin; or dwells with ecstasy on the greatness of the Creator, on the pleasures of "the spring of life," and the enjoyments of this world. When he is grave his thoughts are sublime and religious, but his religion is much more ideal than that of the Koran. It preaches to some extent universal charity; it proclaims "toleration" and liberty of conscience. The Mollah may fret, the Mussulman may inveigh against the "madness of Sufism," but men of sense will prefer the charity, the sympathy of Sufism, to the sword and the intolerant spirit of the Koran. We shall quote a few instances of that feeling of resignation which is not rare in Hafiz :

:

"O Hafiz! there is some pleasure in abstaining from worldly pursuits; suppose not the condition of the worldly is to be envied."

"Some labour in the paths of love; others leave every thing to fate. But place no reliance on the permanency of the world; it is a tenement liable to many changes."

"O my heart! defer the pleasures of to-day until to-morrow, and who will ensure your existence to enjoy them ?"

"Be patient, O my heart! be not vexed; verily, the morn is succeeded by the night, and the night is succeeded by the day"

"Be not sorry if a day of calamity should come; pass on, be thankful, lest greater ill betide thee."

These are fair specimens of the religious Odes of Hafiz: we shall now subjoin some examples of the sportive and the gay:

"Give me wine! wine that shall subdue the strongest,

That for a time I may forget the anxieties of life."

"Do not calumniate, O pious zealot! those who delight in mirth; You will not answer for the sins of others."

"The songstress hath struck up her lyre,
The dancers are wishing to please;
My idol excites their desire,

And robs them of comfort and ease.
The place then is safe and retired,

My rivals are, thank God! at rest;
Her glances the Sufi hath fired,

And fixed Cupid's dart in his breast."

My breast is filled with roses,
My cup is crown'd with wine;
And by my side reposes

The maid I hail as mine.
The Monarch, whereso'er he be,
Is but a slave, compared to me!

Oh, Hafiz! never waste thy hours

Without the cup, the lute, and love!
For 'tis the sweetest time of flowers,
And none these moments shall reprove.
The nightingales around thee sing,
It is the joyous feast of spring.

The reputation of Hafiz has not suffered from time, and his name is still held in the greatest esteem and veneration by his countrymen. It is true, what M. Reviczki has observed, that Hafiz was an esprit fort, and ridiculed the Koran; but such an opinion the Moslem is unwilling to entertain of a poet of whom he is justly proud. It is written in the beautiful "Kitabee Koolsum Nunah:"

"The women of Shiraz have a remarkable taste in minstrelsy, and are devoted to the memory of Hafiz." "Every woman should be instructed to play on the tamborine; and she in turn must teach it to her daughters, that their time may be passed in joy and mirth; and the songs of Hafiz above all must be remembered."

The magic power which Hafiz possessed, is accounted for by the legend of his having quaffed the mysterious cup of immortality. This story is related differently by different authorities.

We follow Mr. Waring, who was long in Shiraz, and was acquainted with all the traditions relating to Persian Poetry:

Hafiz had long been in love with the courtezan Shakh Nubat, and had in course of time amassed a sufficient sum to purchase a return. But having heard a popular superstition, that whoever watched on the Baba Kahee, a hill near Shiraz, for forty nights without sleep, would become an inspired poet, Hafiz resolved to try the adventure. The last night of the vigil was on that appointed for the meeting with Shakh Nubat, and the enraptured Hafiz did not recollect the circumstance, until he had been for a long time in the company of his mistress; but the moment he discovered the error, he tore himself from her arms, and resigned the reward which a year's parsimony had purchased. The next morning the green old man presented to him the cup of Immortality.

There is no mean or abject spirit in the Odes of Hafiz. There is seldom any attempt at wit, and never any obscure metaphors or an inflated style. The love of liberty, so natural to a free spirit and so befitting a patriot, has never been strained to a disease in his writings; his natural mirth has never given birth to mad vagaries-nature alone and nature always has been held up by him to admiration. Not so learned as Sadi, less scientific than Jami, Hafiz is yet the most natural and the least egotistical poet of his country. There are some stanzas in his amorous ditties that breathe egotism; but it is the egotism of an honest heart, of a heart that beheld the fame of rivals unconcerned. At the conclusion of one of his finest Odes he speaks thus of himself: "What can the minstrel sing at the banquet of the Prince, If he singeth not the verses of Hafiz ?"

Of the conceits of Persian Poets much has been said, but Hafiz forms a singular exception to this general rule. There is however a far-fetched idea in one of his light Odes with which we close our review, and which the reader will not consider a blemish so serious as to outweigh the poet's excellences. When referring to the fiction which relates that the tulip first sprung up in the soil which was moistened with the blood of Ferhad, the celebrated lover of Sheran, he says:

"Perhaps the tulip feared the evils of destiny;

Hence, while it lives, it bears the wine goblet on its stock."

This we own is a conceit; but no conceit can be more fanciful and perhaps, more pardonable in a Persian Poet.

ART. VI.-1. The Englishman, 1854-55.

2. The Friend of India, 1854-55.

OUDE is undoubtedly one of the most fertile provinces in India. Its surface extends over about twenty-three thousand seven hundred and forty square miles. An infinity of rivers and nuddees intersect it, and issuing either from the Himalaya Mountains, or the Tarae forest which skirts the Nepal Hills, flow gently through the country, and without cutting too deep into the soil, so admirably irrigate it, that there is scarcely a single acre of ground, which is not capable of being well tilled. The people are strong, industrious, and well acquainted with agriculture, so that under a powerful and equitable Government Oude would be one vast garden, rich, fertile and densely peopled.

There is every probability that Oude "once upon a time" formed part of the bed of an immense inland Sea, caused possibly by a displacement of the Vindhya chain of hills, which, now running in a South Easterly, might ages ago have extended in a North Easterly, direction. Very probably the rivers rising in the Northern range of the Nepal hills, and which had previously flowed into the primeval Lake, forced their way into the Ganges through the dried bed formed by the subsiding of the waters; and the rivers issuing from the Tarae in the Southern Nepal Hill chain, in a similar manner, cut a passage for themselves on their way to the larger streams. The soluble salts, which impregnate more or less the soil, and whose superabundant deposits are carried off by the annual inundations of the numerous streams in Oude, go far to prove the truth of this supposition. In small quantities they fertilize the ground, and serve as nourishment to the trees and shrubs. Where, however, they are to be found in excess, the soil, if not rendered barren, can only be made to yield good crops after the land has been allowed to lie fallow for two or three rainy seasons, and is then well worked and manured. In some few patches, scattered here and there, where the salts are to be met with in too great quantities, the soil is useless for cultivation, but by lexiriation can be made to yield saltpetre and common salt; and from the most barren soil, carbonate of soda is obtained for the manufacture of glass and soap. All these articles are largely used in the country, and considerable exports of them, especially saltpetre, are made into the Company's territories. The soils of Oude are chiefly argillaceous, from light brown to black, the last of which contains, carbonates, silicates, sulphates, and phosphates of alumina and potassa.

The fertility of many portions of the land has often, strange as it may appear, been enhanced by the oppression of the Governors of districts, and the mutinous dispositions of the landholders.

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