Show Thy Face
I Desire a Man
Dīvān-e Shams, ode XVI · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1898By God, without thee the city is a prison to me,O’er mountain and desert I desire to wander.In one hand a wine-cup and in one hand a curl of the Beloved:Such a dance in the midst of the market-place is my desire.My heart is weary of these weak-spirited companions;I desire the Lion of God and Rustam, son of Zāl.Filings of beauty are in the possession of every one that exists;I desire that quarry and that mine of exquisite loveliness.Bankrupt tho’ I be, I will not accept a small carnelian;The mine of rare tremulous carnelian is my desire.Of this folk I am full of complaint, weeping and weary;I desire the drunkards’ wailing and lamentation.My soul is grown weary of Pharaoh and his tyranny;I desire the light of the countenance of Moses, son of ‘Imrān.They said, ‘He is not to be found, we have sought Him long.’A thing which is not to be found—that is my desire.I am more eloquent than the nightingale, but because of vulgar envyA seal is on my tongue, tho’ I desire to moan.Yesterday the Master with a lantern was roaming about the city,Crying, ‘I am tired of devil and beast, I desire a man.’My state has passed even beyond all yearning and desire;I desire to go from Being and Place toward the Essentials.He is hidden from our eyes, and all objects are from Him;I desire that hidden One whose works are manifest.
- First attested
- 1441The oldest dated manuscript among those Nicholson lists for this ode is V, the Hofbibliothek copy at Vienna dated 4th Muḥarram 845 A.H. (1441), which he followed for the Persian. The foot of the Persian on p. 64 lists Cowell's manuscript C (no date given), the Leyden manuscript L (851 A.H.), the Lakhnau edition, the Tabriz edition and V; his Appendix III places it in the Tabriz edition at p. 146 and the Lakhnau at p. 32.
Nicholson's note says the wine-cup-and-curl couplet probably refers to Shaikh Najmu’ddīn Kubrā, murdered by the Moguls in 618 A.H., who at his martyrdom seized an infidel's forelock that ten men could not release after his death. He counts the reference confirmed because Sulaimān Khān the Bābī recited this couplet at his execution.
Nicholson, Selected Poems (1898), note on XVI. 10, pp. 242–243, citing Jāmī's Nafaḥāt al-Uns, pp. 480–487, and Browne's Episode of the Bāb, Vol. II, p. 334
Its refrain is “I desire”: the Lion of God, Moses' light, a thing not to be found, and, with a lantern, a man.
Ode XVI, twenty-five couplets each closing on the Persian refrain ārzūst, “is my desire”. Its first line, “Show thy face, for I desire the orchard and the rose-garden”, gives this entry its title but lies outside the passage printed here, which is couplets 9–20. The lover wants mountain and desert rather than the city; a wine-cup in one hand and the Beloved's curl in the other; ʿAlī, the Lion of God, and Rustam; the mine rather than its filings; Moses rather than Pharaoh; the thing that is not to be found; a man, as the Master with a lantern cried through the city; and the hidden One whose works are manifest. Nicholson's note traces the lantern story to Diogenes the Cynic and points to its longer telling in the Masnavi, where Whinfield's monk searches a crowded bazaar with a lantern. The ode ends with the speaker as the hoopoe desiring Solomon's presence. Nicholson followed the Vienna manuscript (V) and lists four other witnesses.
Light
It makes wanting itself the path: each desire in the list is set against a lesser one — filings for the mine, a small carnelian for the mine of rare carnelian, Pharaoh for Moses — until what is wanted is the one thing the searchers say cannot be found.
Shadow
Nicholson's own note corrects a line of this passage: “because of vulgar envy” should be “because I am jealous of the crowd”, the sentiment of Horace's Odi profanum vulgus. The speaker's weariness with “this folk” and “weak-spirited companions” is contempt as much as longing.
