{"collection":"Islam","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/spa/spa13.htm","path":"isl/spa/spa13.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/isl/spa/spa13.htm","text":"Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans, by H.G. Raverty, [1868]\nThe promise of the kiss, the beloved ever putteth off for to-morrow;\n Then how can my heart place confidence in a pledge like this?\nWhoso is vain enough to depend upon the affairs of the future,\n The wise and sagacious will laugh that foolish man to scorn.\nMy friend is not acquainted with the deceitfulness of the world;\n Yet still she deceiveth, having, in her heart, naught of truthfulness.\nDo not presume to this degree, upon the loveliness of the face:\n Behold the autumn! doth it ever, to the rose, any bloom impart?\nThou, who through arrogance, attest thus falsely towards me;\n Time will pay back unto thee the requital of these deeds of thine.\nIn the land of association, the appliances of pleasure will be many;\n But the troops of bereavement, full speedily, lay it waste.\nNever cast thou thine eyes upon the rose, O nightingale!\n For separation will make those fresh wounds of thine still worse.\nBut is the nightingale wont, through advice, the rose to forswear?\n No! \u2019tis the blast of autumn only that separateth them by force!\nFull many have departed in sorrow, with the hope of to-morrow;\n Then who will place any reliance on life's fidelity to-day?\nThou, who in the hope of existence therefrom, restest in tranquillity\n Doth the empyrean ever any opportunity for continuance allow?\nTo-day, I perceive the crisis of a contingency on the world impending;\n But the future may make apparent unto it some other event.\u00a0*\nThe Severed had never beheld Bij\u0101p\u016br, even in his dreams;\u00a0\u2020\n But, at last, that presenteth itself, which his destiny decreed!\nWhen, in the shape of a shield, the hair on the forehead is plaited\u00a0\u2021\n The roses wreathed therein, impart the intrinsic virtues of the sun.\nThe live-coal-like ruby in her nose jewel\u00a0\u00a7 is fire itself;\n And the red bul\u0101\u1e33,\u00a0\u00a7\u00a7 like unto a spark of fire, is placed by its side.\nThe chamkala\u2019\u012b\u00a0* on her forehead is hence red with her lover's blood,\n That every jewel therein, for piercing, is like a lancet disposed.\nHer eyebrows are a bent bow; her eyelashes, arrows adjusted:\n The ornaments of beauty are sometimes a sword; at others, a dagger made.\nThe devotee of a hundred years is, with one of her glances undone,\n When she decketh out her beauteous person, and goeth forth.\nWhen she disposeth her flowing tresses in curls about her face,\n To the Ethiop army she accordeth permission, devastation to make.\nHer dark eyes she maketh still more black, by the antimony;\n And every eyelash she will make moist in her lover's blood.\nSoft and tender tales she telleth, but they are all dissimulation:\n She casteth her enchantments round the heart, by pretexts and pleas.\nFor her lover, Tartarus and Elysium are ready provided;\n Since the sweet Paradise of conjunction, separation turneth to Hell.\nThe shadow of love is, undoubtedly, the philosopher's stone;\n Since upon whomever it may be rubbed, his body is turned to gold.\nThe punishment is death, in the creed of passion's votaries,\n For him, who entereth love's path, and feareth its struggles and strife.\nNever let him, at any time, gaze upon the face of the beloved,\n Who may be partial unto life, and for his head may fear.\nLike unto the inroads the heart-ravishers make my heart upon\u2014\n When do the Khaibar\u012bs such upon the Mughals\u2019 heads ever make?\nThe Separated will not, thro\u2019 injustice, turn his back to the beloved;\n Though she should make his body red with blood all over!\nWith the scar of sorrow, he will his own heart afflict,\n If, on the world's affairs, any one should reliance place.\nDo not grow vain of its favour; for all is deception:\n Do not imagine, that, in reality, it benevolence showeth.\nWhen it did not act faithfully with those that have gone,\n Whoever seeketh constancy from it to-day, erreth greatly.\nThe foundation of all its acts is on injustice based:\n From the age hope not for good faith; for it knoweth it not.\nDo not pride thyself on the friendship of that friend,\n Who, in the same breath, in a thousand other places smileth.\nI place not an hour's reliance on the permanence of life:\n He is a fool who nourisheth great hopes of immutability.\nAll those splendid edifices, that thou, in the world, beholdest,\n Cruel destiny, at last, will them to a naked desert turn.\nThe Separated, in the Dakhan, would not have a moment stayed;\n But when doth fate ever fulfil our wishes and requests!\nWhat shall I say unto any one regarding the anguish of separation?\n Since it hath not even left within me the power to complain!\nSince every injury she heapeth upon me is right and lawful;\n At least, let the proud one stand once with face towards me.\nThe gold bracelets upon her wrists make an amazing display:\n Fit Let them never become broken from the disasters of fate!\nFor my case, O physician! thou ever showest commiseration\u2014\n Thou sayest, \"by antidotes, thou wilt be from thy afflictions relieved.\"\nThe diseases of the body thou knowest, without doubt;\n But when is the agony of the heart laid bare unto thee?\nKhattak that I am, with exile I am never content;\n But affection for my friend hath from my kin severed me.\nThe grief of The Separated shall be changed into gladness,\n If any one, from the tavern, shall bring wine unto me.\nLike as absence from the beloved hath made day dark to me,\n Let there never be, unto any one, such a dark and lurid day!\nDo not be overjoyed, O marplot! on account of my disjunction;\n For at last, dark and overcast like this, shall be thy day!\nThough constancy may grant to no one the opportunity of association,\n The night of separation, at last, shall become the unclouded day!\nThe spring-time of youth was, than the flowers more pleasant;\n But, alas! it was not so very lasting, the constancy of that day!\nDraw near, O friend, and honour me with a sight of thee!\n For the Almighty hath not in the world created an unchanging day!\nThou that ever puttest off, for to-morrow, the promise of meeting,\n Consider what phase may be assumed by to-morrow's day!\nThe day of delight and pleasure hath passed, as the wind, away\u2014\n For how long shall malice on me be vented by trouble's day!\nTTruly, it will be, at last, like the wind that hath passed away,\n This, that I now behold\u2014separation's long, dreary day!\nThe grief and joy of fortune's changes shall not last for aye:\n Verily, O Separated! it shall reach its end, this oppression's day!\nAccount as wind or as dust, the world's pains and pleasures:\n The free man is not disquieted, by either its troubles or its cares.\nTheir coming, and their going, are more speedy than the dawn;\u00a0*\n For I have, myself, experienced the heat and the cold of time.\nShow thou no hankering for the fare on the board of fortune;\n For there is not a morsel thereon, free from bitterness and woe.\nIn a moment it produceth forms and figures of manifold fashions\u2014\n As a mere throw of the dice account the revolutions of fate.\nWhoso may plume himself on a lucky turn of good fortune,\n It dealeth him a painful wound, at the moment of exulting thereon.\nIf, with the eye of understanding, its sorrows and joys be viewed,\n The permanence of their duration is, than that of the flower no more.\nTurn thy back, O Separated! unto evil; thy face towards good,\n That, on the Great Day of Assembly,\u00a0* thou mayest not, with fear, be pale.\nIn love for thee, O never let my heart grow cold\n Like thine, that in perpetrating injustice, never groweth cold!\nWhen will any one a true and sincere lover style me,\n If my heart, in grief for thee, unto constancy turn cold?\nNo! my heart shall never wax cold unto faithfulness;\n Nor, in this world, will thy nature, unto tyranny grow cold.\nNal, with all his wrongs, did not his back on Daman turn;\u00a0\u2020\n Then how can any one's heart now, unto thee turn cold?\nWhat clamour did the unscathed raise on him always;\n Yet the love of Majn\u016bn for his Layl\u0101 grew not cold.\nAdvisers would, unto him, good counsel ever give?\n But no admonitions made W\u0101mik, unto \u00c6a\u1e93r\u0101 cold!\nNeither did the world show constancy unto the departed;\n Nor have the souls of the covetous, unto the world grown cold.\nMy burnt-up heart hath become as fresh at a sight of thee,\n As the seed of sweet basil maketh the heat-stricken cold.\nThe hope of my meeting hath cooled the fever of absence;\n And the perspiration of recovery always maketh the feverish cold.\nEven at thy death, The Separated will not thy love renounce;\n And forsworn is he, if, in life, his heart unto thee turn cold!\nO thou, who pridest thyself on the plenitude of the world's wealth!\n How is it that the condition of thy forefathers restraineth thee not?\nTheir obvious existence, than that of the flowers hath been less;\n Place then no reliance upon the mere phantasies of the world.\nWhat is it to thee, though the face of the earth be broad?\n But three yards, in its bosom, is all thy portion thereof.\nSince, beneath the earth's surface, thy abode is appointed,\n Fruitlessly, upon it, thou buildest thy mansions and thy courts.\nGaiety and enjoyment are intended for the callous and unconscious;\n But sorrow and concern are, wholly, the portion of the enlightened.\nThe votaries of the world are all tyrants and oppressors;\n From any one of them, of faithfulness, I have never yet heard.\nThey evince not a particle of shame, even in humanity's name:\n They worry and rend each other, like unto ravenous beasts.\nOutwardly, they may practise the appearance of friendship;\n But the heart of every man is filled with opposition and strife.\nThose deceptions that the world's sons now-a-day practise,\n Even the fox would not be guilty of such wiles and deceits.\nWeep not, though thou shouldst experience adversity's frowns!\n For the evils and afflictions of this transient world shall not endure.\nWith the true and sincere, O Separated! love and affection are good;\n But with the deceitful, friendship advantageth not the least.\nSince I am ever hopeful of meeting thee, either to day or to-morrow,\n Uselessly, in this insane idea, passeth my sweet life away.\nWith cries and supplications, I seek it to-day, but find it not;\n For the soldiery of separation destroy the period of my joy.\nThe tree of prosperity yielded not to me the fruit of my desires:\n In wails and lamentations, unjustly, my body I wearied make.\nIn the beginning, when the tree of affection was created,\n Its innate properties brought forth absence's bitter fruit.\nI was wont, unconsciously, to eat of the fruit of separation,\n When, in the garden, I planted affection's tender sprout.\nIn disjunction, O friends! I perceive no fault whatever:\n The heart, this misfortune permitteth, when acquainted therewith.\nWith the sword of separation, He cleaveth asunder, at last,\n The heart of him, whom He, of a lovely face, enamoured maketh.\nThe game of absence, He at that time made so absorbing,\n When, in the world, He thus the mart of affection thronged.\nThe Separated mentioned not, unto a soul, the secret of love;\n But, in the alley of his beloved, the world humiliated him.\nWhen He, of His omnipotence, first the pen produced,\n The destiny of every one, He then with its tongue\u00a0* wrote down.\nTo-day, at every respiration, that allotment arriveth\u2014\n To the share of some, He joy assigned; to the lot of others, grief.\nBy strife and contention now, he cannot great become,\n Who, from all eternity, was entered in an inferior degree.\nThro\u2019 the hatred of the envious, never can become crooked\u2014\n The lot of him, which, in the beginning, He made straight.\nWhen doth death seize the skirt of any one, out of season?\n Yet they will not tarry a moment, whose time is fulfilled.\nThe will of destiny ejected him from the abode of bliss;\n And then it charged unfortunate Adam with the sin.\nAt the wounds of fortune, O Separated! do not sigh;\n For God hath, for the stricken, prepared a wondrous salve!\nWhoever dwelleth in this abode of calamity and affliction,\n For every one, there is trouble, each according to his case.\nI seek after a place of safety, but I am unable to find one;\n The world, to this degree, is so full of misery and woe:\nThough fortune may, a thousand joys, on thee bestow,\n With one affliction, it trampleth them all in the dust.\nNeither is its most propitious time worthy of rejoicing;\n Nor is its most portentous hour for lamentation befitting.\nBe not cast down at its sorrows, for they do not continue;\n And with its pleasures also, do not thou grow overjoyed.\nIf fortune grant unto thee an interview with a pretty one,\n With the sting of separation, it speedily pierceth thy heart.\nProsperity never entereth within the precincts of one's abode,\n Until misery and adversity its companions it maketh.\nGood fortune, by its own words, saith, \"I am not lasting,\"\n If thou shouldst but reverse the letters of that word.\u00a0*\nThe pigeon of vitality, it bringeth quickly down from its flight,\n When the falcon of destiny spreadeth its pillions to the wind.\nIt draweth, without pretext, the dragon from the cave:\n From the river it extracteth the fish, weak and paralyzed.\nThere is no cause for arrogance in life's immutability;\n For it passeth by like the wind, both month and year.\nLike a fool, O Separated! do not thou its slave become;\n For the world's joys and sorrows are a phantom and a dream!\nWhoever have fattened on the fleeting wealth of the world,\n The worms of the earth, at last, have become glutted with them!\nThe world's great ones too, whose history the books relate,\n One after the other have fallen, slaughtered by the knife of death!\nTheir wealth, lands, and mansions, they have transmitted to others:\n Body by body, they have fallen asleep in the house of the tomb!\nOf the empty adulations of the world, they were amazingly vain;\n But they were overcome with regret, when the time of departure came.\nSeeing that the world showed no constancy to the departed,\n How are those who remain, so ardent, to-day, in its pursuit?\nThe world is a faithless bride, that destroyeth her husband;\n Hence the wise, for this reason, are to her friendship so cold.\nThe flowers, that every season bloomed in the garden so sweetly,\n Have likewise, in the autumn, thus been scattered to the winds.\nO thou, of vain pleasures so proud! for thy departure prepare!\n Thy cotemporaries have grown weary in looking out for thee!\nBehold these graves! say, what wilt thou with gardens do?\n Look upon thy dear friends! observe what they have become!\nBend thy looks upon them\u2014comely youths, and youthful brides!\n Separate from each other, in their graves they have withered away!\nBy virtuous actions, O Separated! Heaven is attainable;\n Then never follow in the way of those who have gone astray.\nFor the soul's journey, the white steed became saddled in the heart,\n When upon my chin grew white the hair of youthful days.\nWhen the spring-time of youth unto the body bade adieu,\n The black hair waxed silvery in the autumn of old age.\nSince the miseries of absence have not reduced them to ashes;\n What! have these bones of my body, all, into iron turned?\nEither my good fortune, fallen asleep, giveth me no aid,\n Or the rulers of the present age have stony-hearted grown.\nWhereas the heads thereof make no impression on their bodies,\n On their armour must have broken the arrows of my sighs.\nSorrow, to this degree, causeth the blood from mine eyes to flow,\n That the garments of my body have become tinged therefrom.\nBehold the state of my eyeballs, by separation caused!\n They have assumed the appearance of red roses within the parterre!\nThough in the heart it may not have fallen, woe's seed sprouteth,\n When, by the plough of disjunction, its ground-plot may be turned.\nWould, O Separated! that absence were, in the world, unknown;\n For from its inroads have become desolate the people thereof!\nOf the pangs of separation I became deserving that day,\n When, weeping and sobbing, from my love I was severed.\nAt that time, for my life, in tears of blood I mourned,\n When, turning my back upon Attak, I weeping began.\nHow shall I now pine after the rocks and shrubs of my country?\n For, having made my parting salutation, I bade them farewell.\nEmbedded in my heart, from Roh\u00a0* an arrow I brought away\u2014\n I failed to bid adieu to my bower, or its sacrifice to become.\u00a0\u2020\nWith much toil, in the world I had a garden laid out;\n And, as yet, I had not smelt a flower, when from it I was torn.\nThe blue heavens laughed from delight until they grew red,\n When facing Hoddaey's mountain\u00a0\u2021 I turned from it away.\nThere is no magician in the Dakhan that can charm me;\n For I am a prisoner become, in a dragon's cavern profound.\nThe assignment of union was hung on the horns of the deer,\u00a0*\n When I crossed to the other bank of Narbada's swift stream.\u00a0\u2020\nThe riches of association were a hoard that I gloated over;\n But in absence's wars, I have to a mere thread and fibre changed.\nHow shall I, to-day, complain of bereavement unto any one?\n I, myself, made a purchase of sorrow, when I a lover became.\nThe vast dust of separation hath hidden happiness from me\u2014\n I am utterly weary grown at the noise of summoning it back.\nI, Khattak, call unto my beloved, but she is not forthcoming:\n Mortified and despairing thereat, I have become wedded unto woe!\nCome, my love! let us, in one home, our abode take up;\n And from our minds dismiss all long and lingering hope!\nHand in hand we will saunter about; for such is fortunate:\n It is not advisable that to-day's inclinations we for to-morrow defer.\nFrom all eternity, revolving fortune is cruel and unjust:\n It is a fallacy if we, to-day, nourish a hope of its constancy.\nWe were many friends, like unto a flock, gathered together,\n When the wolf of separation, by violence, tore us from each other away.\nOur dear, dear friends have from the world departed:\n How long then shall we exist in this sublunary sphere?\nHow can any one the hope of joy and happiness entertain?\n For He brought us into this abode, grief and misery to endure!\nLiving, O friend! The Separated would not have left thee;\n But \u2019tis the king's tyranny that hath, by force, parted us!\u00a0*\nThe wise, for this reason, unto the world's affairs will be cold;\n That all its griefs are like the blast, and like the dust its joys.\nDo not, O Darwesh! false account my sorrow and my sighs;\n For, at that time, the eyes will weep, when the heart may aching be.\nThe head of courage will not bow for the sake of throne and crown;\n When the man, of spirit free, may know what the world's gifts are.\nThat man, who may traffic in perfidiousness, and in iniquity,\n Will be pale and ghastly, when he entereth the assembly of the just.\nIn the estimation of the wise, even worse than the ox they are,\n Who may be constantly overwhelmed in gluttony's cares.\nThe revolving heavens are a mill, and man the grain therein:\n He is no sooner in the world, than he will into meal be ground.\nIt is out of the question altogether, that in Pus\u2019hto any other bard,\n Shall, like The Separated, so unrivalled, in the art poetic be.\nCompletely false and lying are they all, from first to last,\n Who are gathered around the table of the transient world!\nThe universe is like unto the shop of the sweetmeat-seller:\n Account its resorters nothing else but the flies that they are!\nThe degree of affection, that the flies in that quarter bestow,\n Is according to the quality of the sweets therein contained.\nPlace no reliance soever upon the mere display of their sincerity:\n Falsely, they deception practise: they are their own weal's friends!\nIn the day of prosperity, of constancy, they ever make boast;\n But when a slight disaster occurreth, they all take to flight.\nThe heart's eyes, for its own objects, show sycophancy to the tongue;\n Then do not pride thyself on their oaths; for all are knaves.\nShould they become aware of a good friend's affliction,\n Their tongues cry, \"Dear! dear!\" but they exult in their hearts.\nHope not, in this world, to find a friend, sincere and true;\n For the sons of the present day are hypocrites and rogues.\nThere is neither love, nor affection, nor friendship in them:\n By some craft they acquire; for they are all the loaf's slaves.\nThe world's interests and profits are their object, and these they pursue:\n They are neither stedfast on faith's path, nor infidels are they.\nLike as they plot against the very heart's blood of one another,\n In hatching each other's ruin are wolves ever thus occupied?\nAs yet, the day of doom hath not been viewed by human eye;\n But its operations\u00a0* I, to-day, perceive; since all are for themselves.\nNever yet have I found, in any one, either fidelity or truth;\n Whether it be in brethren or kinsmen, in relations or friends!\nSince I, The Separated, became acquainted with its secrets,\n I find the world hath countless women, and but few, few men!\n252:* The poet here appears to refer to some chance of release from captivity.\n252:\u2020 Bij\u0101p\u016br, the name of the fortress in which he was confined.\n252:\u2021 This refers to a custom prevalent amongst all the Afgh\u0101n tribes in the days of the poet, and still observed by the Ghalz\u012bs and other tribes of Central Afgh\u0101nist\u0101n, of plaiting the front hair of young girls, from about eight years of age until the day of marriage, in a round plait about the size of a small saucer, which is allowed to hang down in front, and often reaches to the tip of the nose, but not covering the eyes, thus acting the part of a mask. On the marriage-day it is opened and plaited in the ordinary way. A picture containing a girl wearing the hair in this manner will be found in Captain L. W. Hart's work of \"Sketches of Afghan Costume,\" lithographed by Haghe.\n252:\u00a7 An ornament worn by women in the left nostril.\n252:\u00a7\u00a7 A ring of gold worn in the cartilage of the nose.\n253:* An ornament for the forehead. These names are Indian, not Afgh\u0101n; but Afgh\u0101ns bordering on the Panj\u0101b and India have borrowed these terms and ornaments from the people of those parts.\n256:* The coming and departure of day is very rapid in the East, there being but little twilight.\n257:* The resurrection.\n257:\u2020 The names Nal and Daman, W\u0101mik and \u00c6a\u1e93r\u0101, Majn\u016bn and Layl\u0101, are those of lovers, celebrated in Eastern poetry.\n259:* The nib of the pen.\n261:* This very pretty idea of the poet's is a play upon the Arabic word ik-b\u0101l, signifying, 'good fortune,' which, if read backwards, becomes l\u0101-bak\u0101, meaning, 'without stability or permanence.'\n263:* Roh is the name applied to the Afgh\u0101n countries generally; hence the name of Rohilahs, by which the Afgh\u0101ns are sometimes distinguished.\n263:\u2020 See third note at page 139.\n263:\u2021 See third note at page 247.\n264:* Referring to the custom of Eastern governments, of granting assignments on persons or revenues of villages, for payment of money. An assignment on a deer's horns is a proverb, with reference to any impracticable, or very difficult matter next to impossible, it being first necessary to catch your deer.\n264:\u2020 A river of Central India.\n265:* Referring to his captivity in India.\n267:* All ties will then be broken; for all will be so much occupied with their own affairs and interests, that they will pay no attention to others, however dear they may have been in this world.","title":"Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans: Ashraf Kh\u0101n, Khattak: The Poems of Ashraf Kh\u0101n, Khattak","type":"page"}