_Stanza 1._—This poem has been expounded to me as a description of the
poet’s quest for love. In an allegory he shows how he looked for it in
vain from that image of earthly devotion, the nightingale; he warns men
that it comes not but by humiliation and sorrow; he questions the magic
garden, but its breezes cannot answer him; finally, he concludes that
love is not that which lies upon the lips of men, and calls upon the
Cup-bearer to silence their idle talk with the wine of divine knowledge.
_Stanza 2._—The Garden of Irem was planted by the mythical King Shedad,
the son of Ad, the grandson of Irem, who was himself the son of Shem.
The tribe of Ad settled in the sandy deserts near Aden, where Ad began
the building of a great city which his son completed. Round his palace
Shedad planted a wonderful garden which was intended to rival in beauty
the Garden of Eden. “When it was finished he set out with a great
attendance to take a view of it, but when they were come within a day’s
journey of the place they were all destroyed by a terrible noise from
heaven.... The city, they tell us, is still standing in the deserts of
Aden, being preserved by Providence as a monument of divine justice,
though it be invisible, unless very rarely, when God permits it to be
seen, a favour one Colabah pretended to have received in the reign of
the Khalif Moawiyah, who, sending for him to know the truth of the
matter, Colabah related his whole adventure: that, as he was seeking a
camel he had lost, he found himself on a sudden at the gates of this
city, and entering it, saw not one inhabitant, at which being terrified,
he stayed no longer than to take with him some fine stones which he
showed the Khalif.”—_Sale’s Koran._
Sudi says that Hafiz composed this poem in a beautiful garden belonging
to Shah Shudja, and called by him the Bagh-i-Irem, after Shedad’s
legendary Paradise.
“Il y avait jadis en Perse un grand roi nommé Djem ou Djemshid. Il régna
sept cents ans; je ne saurai vous dire à quelle date au juste, mais
‘tant qu’il régna, il n’y eut dans son empire ni mort, ni maladie, ni
vieillesse, et tous les hommes marchaient dans la taille de jouvenceaux
de quinze ans; il n’y avait ni chaleur, ni froideur, et jamais ne se
desséchaient les eaux ni les plantes.’ Mais le pauvre Djem n’avait point
la tête solide, et, comme il faisait des immortels, il se crut Dieu et
voulut être adoré. Aussitôt, le Fari Yazdan, c’est-à-dire la gloire
royale qui vient de Dieu, l’abandonna; un serpent à trois têtes, nommé
Zohab, vint de l’Arabie et lui prit son trône; il s’enfuit dans l’Inde
et y resta chaché mille ans durant; puis un beau jour, s’étant aventuré
hors de sa retraite, il fut livré au serpent, qui le scia en deux avec
une arête de poisson. Entre autres splendeurs, le roi Djemshid, au temps
de sa splendeur, possédait une coupe magique où il voyait tout l’univers
et tout ce qui s’y passe. Certains savants prétendent que cette coupe
était le soleil qui voit toute chose; d’autres, que c’était un globe
terrestre mis au courant, et il me souvient qu’il y a deux ans, prenant
le thé dans un café de Stamboul avec un sage d’Isfahan, nommé Habib, la
conversation tomba de la tasse de thé à la coupe de Djemshid, et Habib,
me mettant le doigt au front, me dit: Djam-i-Djemshid, dil-i-agah: “la
coupe de Djemshid c’est le cœur de l’homme de science.””—_Darmsteter_,
“_Lettres sur l’Inde_.”
A few miles from Peshawar, Darmsteter goes on to relate, there is a
dried-up pond called the Talab i Djemshid, into which the King is said
to have cast his magic cup. The head man of the village told the French
traveller that a knife had been discovered there bearing this
inscription: “This pond was dug by me, Djemshid, five hundred years
before the Hejra.” “Elle n’a pas été retrouvée, la coupe de Djemshid,”
adds Darmsteter, “non plus que la coupe du roi de Thulé, c’est pour ça
qu’il n’y a plus parmi les hommes ni science, ni amour.”
Djemshid is supposed to have built Persepolis. There is a legend that
his cup was found buried in its foundations, and that it was formed of
an enormous turquoise. It is said that he was the first to drink wine,
and that he recommended it to his subjects as a health-giving beverage.
He, too, was the father of chemistry and the possessor of the
philosopher’s stone.