From the epic one turns to the lyric poetry. here the verse-schemes are for the most part borrowed from the Arabs, although the rula 1, or quatrain. is distinctly Persian in origin. The principal lyric forms are five in number, and are as follows: (1) The kassida (from Arabic gasada, 'to break') is employed chiefly in eulogies. It consists of at least twelve and at most ninety-nine couplets (bait), the second lines of which must rhyme with the first two lines (inatla'), thus giving the rhyme-scheme act, ba, ea, da, etc. The thought in each bait must be complete in itself, but need not he inseparably connected either with the preceding or following couplet. To employ the Persian figure, the rhyme is the thread on which the pearls of the baits are strung. The frequent change of order of distichs which is found in Persian manuscripts of lyric poetry thus becomes easily explicable. (2) The ghazal (from Arabic ghazala, 'to be abundant') is identical in form with the kassida, hut can have no more than twelve couplets, the last of which must contain the name of the poet. This verse is devoted especially to poems on love and wine. (3) The kit'a (from Arabic qata'a, 'to cut off') is the same as the kassida, excepting that the matla is lacking. Tts rhyme-scheme is ac cordingly ab, cb, db, eb, etc. (4) The mathnawi (from Arabic thanaya, 'to fold') is a long poem of epic, mystic, or didactic content, with each • bait or couplet rhyming, act, bb, cc, dd, etc. (5) The rubal, or quatrain (from Arabic raba'a, `four'), is preminently the Persian form of epi• gram. Its metrical scheme, read from right to and its rhyme is either uaau, or (tabu.
In general the Persian lyric differs from the epic only in those restrictions which the external form lays upon it. The spirit is practically the same. It is, of course, natural that the personal element should enter into the lyric far more than into the epic, and that we should find in its briefer compass a sublimation, as it were, of the conceits and mannerisms, which are more scat tered in the epic. The lyric poetry of Persia may be divided into the lyric proper, the religious and didactic, and the Court poetry. In the first division love is the predominating motif, and the theme of next importance is wine. Into the purely subjective lyric, such as is fa miliar in modern Occidental poetry, the Persian does not enter. The love which is celebrated is either happy, or, in the great majority of verses, blighted by the cruelty of. or separation from, the beloved. The poet rings countless changes on this single theme. lie sighs for the curl and the mole, the sugar lip and the cypress form of the object of his devotion. In nearly every in stance the love set forth is, at least superficially and exoterically considered, sensuous. Of ro mantic devotion there is scarcely a trace in Persian literature, even in the greatest epics of the Joseph and Zalikha cycle. It is further more a characteristic of Persian erotic verse that the beloved is represented as a boy, as is shown, for instance, by the constant allusions to the skinker or saqi. This usage, strange and easy of misinterpretation to the Western reader. is bor rowed from Arabic poetic usage. The explanation seems to lie not in an assumption of low morality, but in the .Arabo-Persian view that it is indeli cate to refer openly to a woman. As the seclusion of women is universal throughout Mohammedan countries, the sole refuge left to the poet was to change in his verse the sex of his love. The in cessant praise of wine was due to the fact that it is a forbidden drink. Strict Mohammedan orthodoxy condemns the wine-bibber to hell on the authority of the Koran. The Persians:, how ever, being Shiites in creed. are opposed on prin ciple to the orthodox Sunnis, and as the old Ira nians in pre-Islamitic times were inclined to the use of wine, their descendants sing the praises of the giape in tones ton real to he mistaken. Be
sides this exoteric reading of love and wine. there is, however, an esoteric interpretation. The be loved is Cod. the curl is the transient charm which partially hides Ilis face, the mole is the cen tre of His divine imity,and the wine is the ecstasy which fills man, the lover, at the thought of re union with the Beloved, absent for a time and seemingly cruel. The literal interpretation too common in the \Vest, which disregards or de nies the mystic element in this poetry, may with some good reason be regarded as inadequate. It is self-evident, on the other hand. that a solely Sufiistie view of these poems is equally misleading. The truth seems to be that there is no clear line of demarcation between the esoteric and the exo teric. Both were in many cases simultaneously present in the poet's mind.
In the Persian lyric by far the greatest names are those of Hafiz (q.v.) (fourteenth century), whose ghazals are his most famous poems, and of Omar Khayyam (q.v.) (died 1123), whose quatrains are the Persian poems best known to the Occident. Hafiz had been preceded by several poets of whom Kamal ud-din Isfahani (died 1237), lbn gamin (died 1344-45), and Salman of Sava (died 1376 or 1377) were the most note worthy. After him came a long line of imitators of more or less ingenuity. Among them mention may be made of Jami, more famous as a di dactic poet, and Amir Sinthi (died 1453). Jami also had his lyric imitators, of whom the most noteworthy was Baba Fighani of Shiraz (died 1516 or 1519), who was called 'the minor Hafiz.' With Jami, however, the lyric poetry of Persia reached its climax, even though minor poets wrote, and though Akbar sought to rekindle the dying flame by his royal patronage. Closely connected with the lyric proper is parody. Here belongs especially the name of Abu lshak (died 1427) , who devoted himself in his Ditoin to the glorification of gastronomy, sparing in his paro dies neither Hafiz, Sadi. nor even Firdausi. A half century after Abu lshak came Malimud Kari, who sang the praises of clothes instead of food. and modeled a clothes State, which reminds one somewhat of Carlyle's Sartor R.esartus, with bur lesque substituted for philosophy. Beside the parody there is the lower vein of ribald verse, to which Orientals are somewhat inclined. Enough to mention the names of Sozeni (died 1173-74). Azraki (died 1132). and the greatest of them all, Zakani (died 1370-71), beside whose verses even Martial loses piquancy. Here, too, is a Per sian counterpart of Marguerite of Navarre, Ma histi, the favorite of the Sultan Sanjar (died 1157), who could write extremely spicy poems without forfeitino. esteem. As is implied by the renown of Mahisti. Persian poetesses are not un known. In the harem much fugitive verse was composed. chiefly. of course, of an erotic nature, but comparatively little has been preserved. As other subordinate forms of the lyric in Persia, the riddle and the tarilch, or ehronogram, must he mentioned. The riddles do not differ essentially from those in other literatures. The chronogram is, however, comparatively rare outside of Arabic and Persian. It is formed by the construction of an appropriate sentence, the sum of the nu merical values of whose letters equals the year in which the event alluded to by the sentence oc curred. It is stated by Kazwini, for instance, with regard to the entrance of Hassan ibn Sab bah, the notorious leader of the Assassins (q.v.1, into the fortress of Alanmt, whieh had anciently been called Alah Amut, that "by a strange chance the sum total of the letters .4/ (a)h Amid in the Arable chronogram was tile year of his entry into the castle." Adding the numerical values of the letters of this name, a = 1. / = 30. h = 5, a = 1, = 40, 6 = 6, t = 400, we have the date of the event. 483 A.H. (= 1090 A.D.).