“A vision in crimson appears on the roof of the Palace,” she wrote
beneath it this line completing the couplet:
“Neither supplications nor force nor gold can win her.” And so returned
it.
Yet, gallant man as he was, this did not stifle his hope, and knowing
that in her garden at Lahore she was building a noble marble pavilion,
he entered the garden one day disguising his princeliness under the
garment of a mason, carrying his hod on his shoulder, and passed where
she stood apart watching her girls who were playing at chausar.
And as he drew near he whispered,
“In my longing for thee I have become as dust wandering round the
earth,” and she whose soul was fixed as a lonely star, responded
immediately,
“If thou hadst become as the wind yet shouldst thou not touch a tress of
my hair.”
So it was always. An embassage was sent from the Shah Abbas of Persia
entreating her hand for Mirza Farukh his son, and the Prince came with
it, a gallant wooer. She dared not at once refuse the insistence of her
father Aurungzib Padshah, and consented that he should come to Delhi
that she might judge of his worthiness. And with a glorious retinue
resembling a galaxy of stars he came, and she feasted the prince in the
pleasure-pavilion in her own garden, and in its marble colonnade with
her own fair hand offered him wine and sweetmeats, but veiled in gold
gauze, so that not one glimpse had he of the hidden eyes. And exalted
with wine and folly he asked for a certain sweetmeat in words which by a
laughing play on words signify—a kiss!
This, to the proudest of women! One moment she paused and then
haughtily,
“Ask for what you desire from the slaves of our kitchen,” and so went
straight to her royal father and told him that though face and jewels
were well enough, the man had the soul of a groom under his turban of
honour, and she would have none of him. She had her royal way.
Raging with foiled pride and desire he sent her this verse,
“I am determined never to leave this temple.
Here will I bow my head, here will I prostrate myself.
Here will I serve, and here alone is happiness.”
But he beat against marble, for she returned this answer only:
“Child, how lightly dost thou esteem this game of love!
Nothing dost thou know of the fever of longing and the fire of separation,
and the burning flame of love!”
Alas, her heart knew them too well!
So he went away despairing and that was the last of her suitors.
Very sad grew my Princess. The dead have more power than the living, and
the clutch of a dead hand chills the blood. She had the soul of a mystic
and in her poems desire for the Eternal Beloved was mingled with love of
him who was now also behind the Veil of non-existence, and I know not
which was more in her thoughts when she wrote with tears that fall and
falling gather,
“O idle arms,
Never the lost Beloved have ye caressed:
Better that ye were broken than like this
Empty and cold eternally to rest.
“O useless eyes,
Never the lost Beloved for all these years
Have ye beheld: better that ye were blind
Than dimmed thus by my unavailing tears.
“O fading rose,
Dying unseen as hidden thou wert born:
So my heart’s blossom fallen in the dust
Was ne’er ordained his turban to adorn.”
Very strange is the heart of a woman! I, remembering her scorn for this
very Prince and her will to slay him with her own hand, could not at all
commend nor comprehend her passion for him dead whom living she trod as
the dust beneath her feet. She permitted my speech gently, but would
reply only,
“He loved me and gave his life for me.” And I venturing to rejoin,
“But O exalted Lady, men will give their lives for a little thing, a
jewel, a worthless intrigue, the slaying of a tiger, and is his
sacrifice worth such a return as yours?” she replied with calm; “Greater
love hath no man than in silence to lay down his life uncheered by
commendation or the joy of battle, and to him I swore fidelity. Should I
change? In his death was the high heart that in life would have grown to
glory—and I broke it.”
And I said:
“It is greater love to live for a woman than to die for her and this he
could never have done, for his profligacy and selfishness would have
swept all love to ruin,”—and she, smiling, put this by, as one who has
attained in her own heart to behold the innermost secrets of love. And
which of us was right I cannot now tell.
But as love rose about her like a tide her thoughts turned more and more
to the Supreme, the Self-Existent,—and this love also consumed her for
He wounded her heart with the august secrets of His beauty, and
perceiving in vision wafts of His sweetness she sank into a deep
melancholy, desiring that to which no earthly passion may attain. So in
this poem she beheld Him as the Hunter of the Soul:
“I have no peace, the quarry I, a Hunter chases me,
It is Thy memory.
I turn to flee but fall: for over me He casts His snare,
His perfumed hair,
Who can escape Thy chain? no heart is free
From love of Thee.”
So passioning for the Divine she spent her days in longing, and a great
wisdom came upon her, for even as her mighty father narrowed in vision,
persecuting the Hindus, and breaking the very Empire against the rock of
their tortured faith, so she like the sun at setting illumined all
beliefs, even the lowliest, with her level rays, declaring that where
any prayer is made that place is the mosque and the Kiblah.
Had that lady been Emperor it is not too much to say she had saved the
Empire. Would to Allah that she had been. But He knows all.
Yet a better fate was decreed for her for she lived, exhaling love as
the lily its perfume, and departed in a white peace, a gently fading
light like the cresset that for a little illumines the quiet of a tomb,
and this she said in dying,
“I am the daughter of a King but I have taken the path of renunciation,
and this shall be my glory, as my title signifies that I am the Glory of
Women.”
This she is, for in India she is remembered by all who burn in the fire
of love, human or divine.
Yet, since she was a woman and therefore a creature of unreason, must I
condemn her passion for the worthless prince to whom her royal life was
dedicate.
And here I set down the last words that Makhfi—the Hidden One—wrote
with her dying hand, and they were these—
“Yet, Makhfi, unveiled is thy secret,
Abroad all thy passion be told,
Who saw not the beauty of Yusuf
When he in the market was sold.”
and as she lived she died, lamenting that too late she had known his
hidden heart.
When she was departed a poet of Persia made these verses of her:
concerning the serenity of her spirit:
“Love sings to himself of love and the worlds dance to that music,
As wise snakes dance to the Charmer playing upon his pipe,
Love gazes on deep waters for ever dreaming his face.
Slay all my senses but hearing that I may immortally listen.
Calm every wave of my soul that it may mirror the Dream.”
And her father the Emperor, grieving, made her a glorious tomb of marble
domed and pinnacled with gold and the tower and minars roofed with
turquoise tiles. Nay, the very sand of the paths was dust of turquoises,
and about it a glorious garden where her sweet spirit might gladden to
dream in the moonlight, her griefs forgotten, her joys completed in the
ecstasy of union with the One, the Alone.
And yet—yet—thus wrote my Princess:
“If on the Day of Reckoning
God saith, ‘In due proportion I will pay
And recompense thee for thy suffering.’
“Lo, all the joys of heaven it would outweigh.
Were all God’s gladness poured upon me, yet
He would be in my debt.”
May the lights of Allah be her testimony and make bright her tomb.
For I loved her, and pray that her memory may be fragrant when I am
dust.
And very strange and secret is the heart of a woman.