White And Green And Black Tears

Why are your tears so white?
Dear, I have wept so long
That my old tears grow white like my old hair.

Why are your tears so green?
Dear, the waters are wept away
And the green gall is flowing.

Why are your tears so black?
Dear, the weeping is over
And the black flash you loved is breaking.

From the Arabic (School of Ebn-el-Farid) (thirteenth century).

Edward Powys Mathers

Edward Powys Mathers was an English translator and poet, best known for translating the French Orientalist J.C. Mardrus's translation of 'The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night' in 1923. In addition to translations, Powys Mathers was an influential figure in the realm of cryptic crosswords, devising some of the most challenging puzzles for 'The Observer'. His translations have been lauded for their literary beauty and for introducing English-speaking audiences to classic Persian, Arabic, and Turkish poetry.

Edward Powys Mathers

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A Poet Looks At The Moon

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

English

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Tears

How can a heart play any more with life,
    After it has found a woman and known tears?

In vain I shut my windows against the moonlight;
    I have estranged sleep.

The flower of her face is growing in the shadow
    Among warm and rustling leaves....

I see the sunlight on her house,
    I see her curtains of vermilion silk....

Here is the almond-coloured dawn;
    And there is dew on the petals of my night flower.

Lyric of Korea.

Edward Powys Mathers

And Ask Ye Why These Sad Tears Stream?

Te somnia nostra reducunt.
OVID.

And ask ye why these sad tears stream?
Why these wan eyes are dim with weeping?
I had a dreama lovely dream,
Of her that in the grave is sleeping.

I saw her as twas yesterday,
The bloom upon her cheek still glowing;
And round her playd a golden ray,
And on her brows were gay flowers blowing.

With angel-hand she swept a lyre,
A garland red with roses bound it;
Its strings were wreathd with lambent fire
And amaranth was woven round it.

I saw her mid the realms of light,
In everlasting radiance gleaming;
Co-equal with the seraphs bright,
Mid thousand thousand angels beaming.

I strove to reach her, when, behold,
Those fairy forms of bliss Elysian,
And all that rich scene wrapt...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Her Nails

She is as wise as Hippocrates,
As beautiful as Joseph,
As sweet-voiced as David,
As pure as Mary.

I am as sad as Jacob,
As lonely as Jonah,
As patient as Job,
As unfortunate as Adam.

When I met her again
And saw her nails
Prettily purpled,
I reproached her for making up
When I was not there.

She told me gently
That she was no coquette,
But had wept tears of blood
Because I was not there,
And maybe she had dried her eyes
With her little hands.

I would like to have wept before she wept;
But she wept first
And has the better love.
Her eyes are long eyes,
And her brows are the bows of subtle strong men.

From the Arabic of Yazid Ebn Moauia (seventh century).

Edward Powys Mathers

Tears

Tears! tears! tears!
In the night, in solitude, tears;
On the white shore dripping, dripping, suck'd in by the sand;
Tears not a star shining all dark and desolate;
Moist tears from the eyes of a muffled head:
O who is that ghost? that form in the dark, with tears?
What shapeless lump is that, bent, crouch'd there on the sand?
Streaming tears sobbing tears throes, choked with wild cries;
O storm, embodied, rising, careering, with swift steps along the beach;
O wild and dismal night storm, with wind! O belching and desperate!
O shade, so sedate and decorous by day, with calm countenance and regulated pace;
But away, at night, as you fly, none looking O then the unloosen'd ocean,
Of tears! tears! tears!

Walt Whitman

The Tear.

O lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros
Ducentium ortus ex animo; quater
    Felix! in imo qui scatentem
        Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit. ^[1]

Gray, 'Alcaic Fragment'.



1.

When Friendship or Love
Our sympathies move;
When Truth, in a glance, should appear,
The lips may beguile,
With a dimple or smile,
But the test of affection's a Tear.


2.

Too oft is a smile
But the hypocrite's wile,
To mask detestation, or fear;
Give me the soft sigh,
Whilst the soul-telling eye
Is dimm'd, for a time, with a Tear.


3.

Mild Charity's glow,
To us mortals below,
Shows the soul from barbarity clear;
Compassion will melt,
Where this virtue is felt,
And its dew is...

George Gordon Byron

Written On A Wall In Spring

It rained last night,
But fair weather has come back
This morning.

The green clusters of the palm-trees
Open and begin to throw shadows.

But sorrow drifts slowly down about me.

I come and go in my room,
Heart-heavy with memories.

The neighbour green casts shadows of green
On my blind;
The moss, soaked in dew,
Takes the least print
Like delicate velvet.

I see again a gauze tunic of oranged rose
With shadowy underclothes of grenade red.

How things still live again.

I go and sit by the day balustrade

And do nothing

Except count the plains
And the mountains
And the valleys
And the rivers
That separate from my Spring.

From the Chinese (early nineteenth century).

Edward Powys Mathers