On the Day of My Death

The Grave Is a Curtain

When my bier moveth on the day of death,Think not my heart is in this world.Do not weep for me and cry ‘Woe, woe!’Thou wilt fall in the devil’s snare: that is woe.When thou seest my hearse, cry not ‘Parted, parted!’Union and meeting are mine in that hour.If thou commit me to the grave, say not ‘Farewell, farewell!’For the grave is a curtain hiding the communion of Paradise.After beholding descent, consider resurrection;Why should setting be injurious to the sun and moon?To thee it seems a setting, but ’tis a rising;Tho’ the vault seems a prison, ’tis the release of the soul.What seed went down into the earth but it grew?Why this doubt of thine as regards the seed of man?What bucket was lowered but it came out brimful?Why should the Joseph of the spirit complain of the well?Shut thy mouth on this side and open it beyond,For in placeless air will be thy triumphal song.

Dīvān-e Shams, ode XXIV · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1898
First attested
1372The oldest dated witness Nicholson names is the manuscript he printed from, B: British Museum Or. 2866, dated 1st Jumādā ’l Ākhir, 774 A.H. (late 1372). The foot of the Persian on p. 94 lists B, Cowell's manuscript C, the Leyden manuscript L, the Lakhnau edition, the Tabriz edition and the Vienna manuscript V; his Appendix III places it in the Tabriz edition at p. 171 and the Lakhnau at p. 93.

Nicholson printed this ode from B, the oldest dated manuscript he lists, yet departs from it twice: where B has the devil's “butter-milk” (dūgh, which his note says is used here for ‘deception’) he prints “snare”, and where B and V have the second halves of couplets 3 and 4 swapped he prints them the other way round.

Nicholson, Selected Poems (1898): the Persian of ode XXIV and its apparatus, p. 94 (“For the second miṣrāʿ of this beyt B and V substitute the second miṣrāʿ of 4”); note on XXIV. 2, p. 265

The speaker tells his mourners not to cry woe or farewell: the grave is a curtain, and the setting a rising.

Ode XXIV, nine couplets, printed here whole: the speaker tells whoever sees his hearse what not to say. They are not to think his heart is in this world, nor cry “Woe”, “Parted” or “Farewell”, for the grave is a curtain hiding the communion of Paradise, and union and meeting are his in that hour. Setting does not harm the sun and moon; what seems a setting is a rising, and the vault, in Nicholson's note the laḥad, an oblong trench in the side of a grave, is the soul's release. No seed goes into the earth but it grows, no bucket down a well but it comes up brimful, and the Joseph of the spirit need not complain of the well (his note cites Qurʾān 12:15). The last couplet tells the hearer to shut his mouth on this side and open it beyond. Nicholson's “bier” renders tābūt and his “hearse” janāza. He printed the ode from the British Museum manuscript B (774 A.H.) and lists five other witnesses.

Light

It meets the fear of the grave with things a mourner can watch — the sun that sets and rises, the buried seed that grows, the bucket that comes up full — and tells him the hour of the hearse is one of union, not parting.

Shadow

It forbids grief its words. The mourner who cries “Woe, woe!” is told he will fall into the devil's snare, which leaves little room for ordinary sorrow at a graveside.

Sources and verification4 sources · 5 links

Primary source

Scholarship

  • Reynold A. Nicholson, Selected Poems from the Dīvāni Shamsi Tabrīz, notes to ode XXIV, 1898, pp. 265–266On couplet 2, the variant dūgh, literally “butter-milk”, used “in the secondary sense of ‘deception’”; on couplet 4, janān as the plural of janna, whether vowelled jinān or janān; on couplet 6, laḥad; on couplet 7, T. 163. 12a, “The seed of the spirit, sown beneath this water and clay (the body), Becomes not a tree until it reach Thy spring”; on couplet 8, the well, “Kor. XII. 15”.

    an oblong trench, where the corpse is deposited, in the side of a grave

The tradition itself

  • The Qurʾān, Sūrat Yūsuf 12:15The verse Nicholson gives for the well of the eighth couplet: Joseph's brothers take him away and resolve to put him at the bottom of the well.

Further reading

Linked entries

  • Attributed toRūmīAttested

    An ode of the Dīvān that Nicholson printed as Rūmī's from the oldest dated manuscript he lists, the British Museum copy of 774 A.H., and records in five other witnesses.

  • Part ofThe Dīvān-e Shams-e TabrīzīAttested

    Ode XXIV of Nicholson's forty-eight selections, nine couplets, in the Tabriz edition at p. 171 and the Lakhnau at p. 93 by his table.

  • Derives fromReynold A. NicholsonAttested

    The English is Nicholson's 1898 prose; his text departs from his own base manuscript in two places, and his apparatus says where.

  • Set againstI Died as a MineralA modern connection

    Both answer the fear of dying with growth, but from different grounds: the Masnavi's ladder reasons from forms already passed through (“When have I become less by dying?”), this ode from things a mourner can watch, the seed, the bucket and the setting sun.

  • Set againstUp, O Ye LoversAttested

    Two odes on leaving the world: here the whole caravan is roused to depart, there the speaker's own bier moves and the mourners are told not to cry farewell.

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