As gems are taught by patient art In sparkling ranks to beam, With manners thus he forms the heart, What soft, yet awful dignity! So shines our prince! A sky-born crowd THE VERBAL TRANSLATION. BEHOLD yon reach of the river KI; Its green reeds how luxuriant! how luxuriant! As a cutter, as a polisher of gems O how elate and sagacious! O how dauntless and composed! How worthy of fame! How worthy of reverence! A TURKISH ODE OF MESIHI. HEAR! how the nightingales on every spray, Hail, in wild notes, the sweet return of May; -The gale that o'er yon waving almond blows, The verdant bank with silver blossoms strows: The smiling season decks each flowery glade. Be gay too soon the flowers of spring will fade. + What gales of fragrance scent the vernal air! Hills, dales, and woods, their loveliest mantles wear, Who knows what cares await that fatal day, The tulip now its varied hue displays, IMITATIONS. "Thou hearest the tale of the nightingale, 'that the vernal season approaches.' The spring has spread a bower of joy in every grove, where the almond tree sheds its silver blossoms. Be cheerful; be full of mirth; for the spring passes soon away: it will not last." "The groves and hills are again adorned with all sorts of flowers; a pavilion of roses, as the seat of pleasure, is raised in the garden. Who knows which of us will be alive when the fair season ends? Be cheer. ful," &c. "The edge of the bower is filled with the light of Ahmed; among the plants the fortunate tulips represent his companions. Come, O people of Mohammed! this is the season of merriment. Be cheerful," &c. * The sparkling dew-drops o'er the lilies play, + The fresh-blown rose like Zeineb's cheek sp pears, When pearls, like dew-drops, glitter in her ears. The charms of youth at once are seen and past: And nature says, "They are too sweet to last." So blooms the rose; and so the blushing maid. Be gay too soon the flowers of spring will fade. $ See! yon anemonies their leaves unfold, Enjoy the presence of thy tuneful friend : The plants no more are dried, the meadows dead, || Clear drops, each morn, impearl the rose's bloom, The dew-drops sprinkled, by the musky gale, IMITATIONS. “ Again the dew glitters on the leaves of the lily, like the water of a bright cimeter. The dew-drops fall through the air on the garden of roses. Listen to me, listen to me, if thou desirest to be delighted. Be cheer ful," &c. "The roses and tulips are like the bright cheeks of beautiful maids, in whose ears the pearls hang like drops of dew. Deceive not thyself, by thinking that these charms will have a long duration. Be cheerful," &c. "Tulips, roses, and anemonies, appear in the gar dens; the showers and the sunbeams, like sharp lancets, tinge the banks with the colour of blood. Spend this day agreeably with thy friends, like a prudent man. Be cheerful," &c. $"The time is passed in which the plants were sick, and the rose-bud hung its thoughtful head on its bosom. The season comes in which mountains and rocks are coloured with tulips. Be cheerful," &c. "Each morning the clouds shed gems over the rosegarden; the breath of the gale is full of Tartarian musk. Be not neglectful of thy duty through too great a love of the world. Be cheerful," &c. "The sweetness of the bower has made the air so fragrant, that the dew, before it falls, is changed into rosewater. The sky spreads a pavilion of bright clouds over the garden. Be cheerful," &c. * Late, gloomy winter chill'd the sullen air, May this rude lay from age to age remain, HYMN TO CAMDEO. THE ARGUMENT. THE Hindoo god, to whom the following poem is ad. dressed, appears evidently the same with the Grecian Eros and the Roman Cupido; but the Indian description of his person and arms, his family, attendants, and attri butes, has new and peculiar beauties. According to the mythology of Hindoostan, he was the son of Maya, or the general attracting power, and married to Retty, or Affection; and his bosom friend is Bessent or Spring: he is represented as a beautiful youth, sometimes conversing with his mother and consort, in the midst of his gardens and temples; sometimes riding by moonlight on a parrot or lory, and attended by dancing girls or nymphs, the foremost of whom bears his colours, which are a fish on a red ground. His favourite place of resort is a large tract of country round Agra, and principally the plains of Matra, where Krishen also, and the nine Gopia, who are clearly the Apollo and muses of the Greeks, usually spend the night with music and dance. His bow of sugar-cane, or flowers with a string of bees, and his five arrows, each pointed with an Indian blossom of a heating quality, are allegories equally new and beautiful. He has at least twenty. three names, most of which are introduced in the hymn: that of Cam, or Cama, signifies desire, a sense which it also bears in ancient and modern Persian; and it is possible that the words Dipue and Cupid, which have the same signification, may have the same origin, since we know that the old Hetruscans, from whom great part of the Roman language and religion was derived, and whose system had a near affinity with that of the Persians and Indians, used to write their lines alternately forwards and backwards, as furrows are made by the plough; and, though the two last letters of Cupido may only be the grammatical termination as in libido and capedo, yet the primary root of cupio is contained in the first three letters. The seventh stanza alludes to the bold attempt of this deity to wound the great god Mahadeo, for which he was punished by a flame consuming IMITATIONS. "Whoever thou art, know that the black gusts of autumn had seized the garden; but the king of the world again appeared, dispensing justice to all in his reign the happy cupbearer desired and obtained the flowing wine. Be cheerful," &c. "By these strains I hoped to celebrate this delightful valley may they be a memorial to its inhabitants, and remind them of this assembly, and these fair maids! Thou art a nightingale with a sweet voice, O Mesihi, when thou walkest with the damsels, whose cheeks are like roses. Be cheerful; be full of mirth; for the spring passes soon away; it will not last!" his corporeal nature, and reducing him to a mental essence; and hence his chief dominion is over the minds of mortals, or such deities as he is permitted to subdue. THE HYMN. WHAT potent god from Agra's orient bowers "Know'st thou not me ?" Celestial sounds I hear! Know'st thou not me?" Ah, spare a mortal ear! Behold"-My swimming eyes entranced I raise God of each lovely sight, each lovely sound, Thy consort mild, Affection ever true, God of the flowery shafts and flowery bow, He bends the luscious cane, and twists the string With bees, how sweet! but ah, how keen their sting! He with five flowerets tips thy ruthless darts, Which through five senses pierce enraptured hearts: Strong Chumpa, rich in odorous gold, Warm Amer, nursed in heavenly mould, F Dry Nagkeser, in silver smiling, Can men resist thy power, when Krishen yields, O thou for ages born, yet ever young The haunts of bless'd or joyless lovers, TWO HYMNS TO PRACRITI. THE ARGUMENT. In all our conversations with learned Hindoos, we find them enthusiastic admirers of poetry, which they consider as a divine art, that had been practised for number several books of Tasso, and to the dramas of Metastasio, are obvious instances; but, that any interest may be taken in the two hymns addressed to Pracriti, under different names, it is necessary to render them intelligible by a previous explanation of the mythological allusions, which could not but occur in them. Iswara, or Isa, and Isani, or Isi, are unquestionably the Osiris and Isis of Egypt; for, though neither a resemblance of names, nor a similarity of character, would separately prove the identity of Indian and Egyptian deities, yet, when they both concur, with the addition of numberless corroborating circumstances, they form a proof little short of demonstration. The female divinity, in the mythological systems in the East, represents the active power of the male; and that Isi means active nature appears evidently from the word s'acta, which is derived from s'acti, or power, and applied to those Hindoos who direct their adoration principally to that goddess: this feminine character of Pracriti, or created nature, is so familiar in most languages, and even in our own, that the gravest English writers, on the most serious subjects of religion and philosophy, speak of her operations as if she were actually an animated being; but such personifications are easily misconceived by the multitude, and have a strong tendency to polytheism. The principal operations of nature are, not the absolute annihilation and new creation of what we call material substances, but the temporary extinction and reproduction, or rather, in one word, the transmutation of forms: whence the epithet Polymorphos is aptly given to nature by European philosophers: hence Iswara, Siva, Hara, (for those are his names and near a thousand more) united with Isi, represent the secondary causes, whatever they may be, of natural phenomena, and principally those of temporary destruction and regeneration; but the Indian Isis appears in a variety of characters, especially in those of Parvati, Cali, Durga, and Bhavani, which bear a strong resemblance to the Juno of Homer, to Hecate, to the armed Pallas, and to the Lucretian Venus. tion. Himalaya, or the Mansion of Snow, is the title given by the Hindoos to that vast chain of mountains, which limits India to the north, and embraces it with its eastern and western arms, both extending to the Ocean; the former of those arms is called Chandrasec'hara, or the Moon's Rock; and the second, which reaches as far west as the mouths of the Indus, was named by the ancients Montes Parveti. These hills are held sacred by the Indians, who suppose them to be the terrestrial haunt of the god Iswara. The mountain Himalaya, being per sonified, is represented as a powerful monarch, whose wife was Mena: their daughter is named Parvati, or Mountain-born, and Durga, or of difficult access; but the Hindoos believe her to have been married to Siva in a The name Parvati took its rise from a wild poetical fic. daughter of Himalaya had two sons; Ganesa, or the Lord of Spirits, adored as the wisest of deities, and always invoked at the beginning of every literary work, and Cumara, Scanda, or Carticeya, commander of the celes less ages in heaven, before it was revealed on earth by Valmic, whose great heroic poem is fortunately preserved: the Brahmins of course prefer that poetry, which they believe to have been actually inspired; while the Vaidyas, (who are in general perfect gramma. rians and good poets, but are not suffered to read any of the sacred writings except the Ayurveda, or Body of Medical Tracts,) speak with rapture of their innumerable popular poems, epic, lyric, and dramatic, which were composed by men not literally inspired, but called, metaphorically, the sons of Sereswati, or Minerva; among whom the Pandits of all sects, nations, and degrees, are unanimous in giving the prize of glory to Ca lidasa, who flourished in the court of Vicramaditya, fifty-seven years before Christ. He wrote several dra. mas, one of which, entitled Sacontala, is in my posses-pre-existent state, when she bore the name of Sati. The sion; and the subject of it appears to be as interesting as the composition is beautiful; besides these he published the Meghaduta, or cloud-messenger, and the Nalodaya, or rise of Nala, both elegant love tales: the Raghuvansa, an heroic poem; and the Cumara Sambhava, or birth of Cumara, which supplied me with ma terials for the first of the following odes. I have not indeed yet read it; since it could not be correctly copied for me during the short interval in which it is in my pow. er to amuse myself with literature: but I have heard the story told, both in Sanscrit and Persian, by many Pandits, who had no communication with each other; and their outline of it coincided so perfectly, that I am convinced of its correctness: that outline is here filled up, and exhibited in a lyric form, partly in the Indian, partly in the Grecian taste; and great will be my pleasure, when I can again find time for such amusements, in reading the whole poem of Calidassa, and in comparing my descriptions with the original composition. To anticipate the story in a preface, would be to destroy the interest that may be taken in the poem: a disadvantage attending all prefatory arguments, of which those prefixed to the tial armies. The pleasing fiction of Cama, the Indian Cupid, and his friend Vasanta, or the Spring, has been the subject of another poem: and here it must be remembered, that the god of Love is named also Smara, Candarpa, and Ananga. One of his arrows is called Mellica, the Nyctanthes of our botanists, who very unadvisedly reject the vernacular names of most Asiatic plants: it is beautifully introduced by Cálidasa into this lively couplet; Mellicamucule bhati gunjanmattamadhuvratah, Prayane panchaoanasya sanc'hamapurayanniva. "The intoxicated bee shines and murmurs in the fresh blown Mellica, like him who gives breath to a white conch in the procession of the god with five arrows." A critic to whom Cálidasa repeated this verse, observed, that the comparison was not exact: since the bee sits on the blossom itself, and does not murmur at the end of the tube, like him who blows a conch. "I was aware of that," said the poet," and, therefore, described the bee as intoxicated: a drunken musician would blow the shell at the wrong end." There was more than wit in this answer; it was a just rebuke to a dull critic; for poetry delights in general images, and is so far from being a perfect imitation, that a scrupulous exactness of descriptions and similes, by leaving nothing for the imagination to supply, never fails to diminish or destroy the pleasure of every reader who has an imagination to be gratified. It may here be observed, that Nymphæa, not Lotos, is the generic name in Europe of the flower consecrated to Isis: the Persians know by the name of Nilufer that species of it which the botanists ridiculously call Nelumbo, and which is remarkable for its curious pericarpium, where each of the seeds contains in miniature the leaves of a perfect vegetable. The lotos of Homer was probably the sugar-cane, and that of Linnæus is a papilionaceous plant; but he gives the same name to another species of the Nymphæa; and the word is so constantly applied among us in India to the Nilufer, that any other would be hardly intelligible: the blue lotos grows in Cashmir and in Persia, but not in Bengal, where we see only the red and white; and hence occasion is taken to feign, that the lotus of Hindoostan was dyed crimson by the blood of Siva. Cuvera, mentioned in the fourteenth stanza, is the god of wealth, supposed to reside in a magnificent city, called Alaca; and Vrihaspati, or the genius of the planet Jupi. ter, is the preceptor of the gods in Swerga or the firmament: he is usually represented as their orator, when any message is carried from them to one of their superior deities. own language, I cannot refrain from subjoining the first Nemean Ode, not only in the same measure as nearly as possible, but almost word for word with the original; those epithets and phrases only being necessarily added, which are printed in Italic letters. TO DURGA. I. 1. FROM thee begins the solemn air, Adored Ganésá; next, thy sire we praise, I. 2. Rock above rock they ride sublime, And wreathe their giant heads in snows eternal The lamentations of Reti, the wife of Cama, fill a whole Though neither morning beam, nor noontide glare, The achievements of Durga in her martial character as the patroness of Virtue, and her battle with a demon in the shape of a buffalo, are the subject of many episodes in the Puranas and Cávyas, or sacred and popular poems; but a full account of them would have destroyed the unity of the ode, and they are barely alluded to in the last stanza. It seemed proper to change the measure, when the goddess was to be addressed as Bhavani, or the power of fecundity; but such a change, though very common in Sanscrit, has its inconveniences in European poetry: a distinct hymn is therefore appropriated to her in that capacity; for the explanation of which we need only premise, that Lacshmi is the goddess of abundance; that the Cetata is a fragrant and beautiful plant of the Diœcian kind, known to botanists by the name Pandanus; and that the Durgótsava, or great festival of Bhavani at the close of the rains, ends in throwing the image of the god. dess into the Ganges, or other sacred waters. I am not conscious of having left unexplained any difficult allusion in the two poems; and have only to add (lest European critics should consider a few of the images as inapplicable to Indian manners) that the ideas of snow and ice are familiar to the Hindoos; that the mountains of Himalaya may be clearly discerned from a part of Bengal; that the Grecian Hamus is the Sanscrit word kaimas, meaning snowy; and that funeral urns may be seen perpetually on the banks of the river. The two hymns are neither translations from any other poems, nor imitations of any; and have nothing of Pindar in them except the measures, which are nearly the same, syllable for syllable, with those of the first and second Nemean Odes: more musical stanzas might perhaps have been formed; but in every art, variety and novelty are considerable sources of pleasure. The style and manner of Pindar have been greatly mistaken; and that a distinct idea of them may be conceived by such, as have not access to that inimitable poet in his I. 3. Nor e'en the fiercest summer heat Could thrill the palace, where their monarch reign'd (Such height had unremitted virtue gain'd!) But she to love no tribute paid; On a morn, when, edged with light, A vale remote and silent pool she sought, II. 2. Not for her neck, which, unadorn'd, See p. 58. II. 3. IV. 3. He view'd, half-smiling, half-severe, There on a crag whose icy rift The prostrate maid—that moment through the rocks Hurl'd night and horror o'er the pool profound, He who decks the purple year, With Cama, horsed on infant breezes flew. III. 1 Dire sacrilege! the chosen reed, That Smara pointed with transcendant art, And tinged its blooming barb in Siva's heart: Some drops divine, that o'er the lotos blue Still mark'd it with a crimson hue. III. 2. Soon closed the wound its hallow'd lips; And meteors rare betray'd the trembling sky; The keenest lightnings were but idle flashes, Which in the front of wrathful Hara rolls, Reduced th' inflamer of our souls. III. 3. Vasant, for thee a milder doom, While ten gay signs the dancing seasons lead. But when the bull has rear'd his golden horn, IV. 1. The thunder ceased; the day return'd; And sigh'd on gemm'd Cailása's viewless head. With fluttering heart, soft Parvati descended; Drank solace through the night, but lay alarm'd, The god her powerful beauty charm'd. IV. 2. All arts her sorrowing damsels tried, [smooth. Her brow, where wrinkled anguish lour'd, to Nor e'en her sacred parent's tender chiding, The rest my song conceal : Unhallow'd ears the sacrilege might rue. In what stupendous notes th' immortals woo. The nuptial feast, heaven's opal gates unfolding, The mountain drear she sought in mantling shade And sage Himálaya shed blissful tears, Her tears and transports hiding, And oft to her adorer pray'd. With aged eyes beholding His daughter, empress of the spheres. |