/$ For thanks, in that the present glow Of friendship circles thee, Light strong the taper e'en in woe, And joyful be. $/
The taper teaches us both to laugh and to weep; it laughs through the flame of shining merriment, albeit it melts at the same time in hot tears; in the act of consumption it spreads wide the brightness of joviality. This is also the general character throughout of this type of poetry.
Among the objects frequently referred to in Persian poetry we may mention flowers and jewels, and, above all, the rose and the nightingale. It is a matter of frequent occurrence to represent the nightingale as bridegroom of the rose. This gift of personality to the rose and love to the nightingale may be abundantly illustrated from Hafis. "Out of gratefulness, O rose," he sings, "that thou art the sultana of Beauty, see to it that thou settest not a proud face to the love of the nightingale." The poet himself speaks of the nightingale of his own soul. When we of the West, on the contrary, refer in our poetry to roses, nightingales, or wine, and such matters, we do so in a wise much nearer to prose. The rose merely serves us for ornament, as in the expression, among others, "garlanded with roses." If we listen to the nightingale it is but to follow the bird with our own emotions; we think of the grape-juice, and call it "the breaker of our cares." Among the Persians, however, the rose is no mere image or ornament, no symbol, but itself appears to the poet as possessed with a soul, as loving bride, and he transpierces with his spirit the rose's very heart. Precisely the same character of a gorgeous Pantheism is still impressed on the most modern Persian poems. Herr von Hammer, for instance, has given us a description of a poem which was forwarded, among other gifts of the Shah, to the Emperor Francis in the year 1819. It contains an account of the exploits of the Shah in 33,000 distiches, who made a present of his own name to the Court poet in question.
(_c_) Goethe, too--here in contrast with the more perturbed atmosphere and the concentrated emotion of the poetry of his youth--was carried away in advanced age by the breadth of this careless and blithesome spirit; and though already a veteran, swept through by the breath of the East, dedicated the evening glow of his poetic passion, in a flood of extraordinary fervour to this freedom of emotion which, even where controversy is the sub ect-matter, still retains the beauty of its careless temper. The songs of his Westöstlicher Divan, are by no means the mere play of trivial social urbanities, but originate in a precisely similar spirit of free and unrestrained emotion. In a song of his to Suleica they are thus described by himself: