Songs and Melodies

... These are poems translated by Mr. Samir Shikhani from Franz Toussaint, a contemporary French man of letters who fell in love with the East and rendered its literary monuments, in prose and verse, into French. Among them we may mention: the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Garden of Caresses, The Rose Garden (by the Persian poet Saadi), the Song of Songs, the Ramayana (an Indian epic), The Book of Love among the Persians, Songs of Love and War in Islam, The Caliph's Journey, The Moon Princess, and others..

Franz Toussaint likewise devoted his care to rendering the Holy Koran into French... And in coming issues we shall present to readers, one after another, specimens of these songs...

The Red Rose

The warrior's wife sat by the window, heavy of heart, embroidering a white rose on a cushion of silk. The needle pricked her finger, and her blood flowed onto the white rose, and it turned red.

Her thoughts go out to meet her beloved, on the field of battle, where his blood may already have dyed the snow.

She hears the fall of a horse's hooves. Can it be that her beloved has come back at last?

No — it is her heart, beating violently within her breast.

She bends lower and lower over the cushion, and her teardrops embroider that red rose with silver.

My Beloved and the Moon

My beloved knows that I gaze upon her when your beams caress her, O moon — and that softens the cruelty of parting...

The Last Stroll

You let the red lavender I had given you fall into the dust. I gathered it up, and it had turned white.

In that brief moment, the sky had snowed upon our love!