Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎106r] (216/312)

nished by sedentary divisions stationed at tlie
mouths of the passes.
Since, however, the force of these reflections
must obviously have been present to both Go
vernments, during the past fortnight, at home and
at Simla, we recommend public opinion not to ac
cept too readily the reports which are current as
to deferred action. Lord L ytton is not likely to
publish abroad all that is intended and has been
prepared for, nor will he leave out of sight those
psychological considerations which, with a popu
lation like that of India, must always be balanced
against political and military problems. In the
event of S here A li's " continued obstinacy," or
of any sudden and reckless challenge by his
arms, enough will no doubt be done to convince
all concerned what the sequel must be, and to !
show that the settlement of this Afghan ques
tion is well understood to be but a portion of a
vaster imperial task* The spirit of the country
is unmistakable ; for even the organs of the late
agitation now demand energetic action, and a
firm support of the Viceroy. Yet, so long as
nothing like feebleness or indecision is shown,
it will, of course, be wise to avoid precipita-
, tion, for, failing the submission or sudden down
fall of S here A li , the business must this time
be thoroughly and finally done. We must
have no fourth Afghan war, if we are obliged
to wage a third, which seems more and more
probable. But the prize of a well-conducted and
adequate campaign may now be permanent tran
quillity in India, which would be worth almost
any expenditure. To secure so important a re
sult by establishing the power of Great Britain
outside as well as inside the gateways of Hin-
dostan, and by definitively thrusting back the
pioneers of Russian intrigue, may demand great
efforts, but it can be and ought to be accom
plished before the present crisis ends. The
hope of the enemies of England is that we
shall be too much embarrassed by this Eastern
outburst of the eternal conspiracy of Panslavism
to deal properly with its Western developments.
England, however, is strong enough to guard her
imperial interests all along the line, and the
plans of her governing minds ought hencefor-.
ward to be as large as her dangers and duties,
and as bold as the temper of her population.
AFGHAN POETS AND POETRY.
Our recent papers, descriptive of Afghanistan
an(| the Afghans—a people and a soil pic- I
turesque alike in landscape, character, and cus
toms—will have partially prepared our readers
for hearing that the country has produced
many poets. That the fact should at first be
a surprise is not altogether remarkable. The
Afghans have been generally looked upon as a
wild race, inordinately given to murder, and
strangely economical of truth. At dropping
an enemy, or a friend, from a safe ambush at a
hundred and fifty yards, with a bullet cut from
a stick of lead while waiting for their victim,
they have long been known to be without a
rival, and it was also a fact generally accepted
that their ponies climb up rocks like cats
and that the Afghans stuck to their backs in the
ascent like limpets. Their hard drinking, ob
scene story telling, and filthy personal habits
were also of common notoriety, and it was fur
ther understood that the most certain way to
assure oneself of an Afghan refraining from
any particular act was to obtain his promise
that he would commit it. The sum total of this
knowledge represented the Afghan as treacher
ous, sensual, and dirty, a good horseman on
under-sized ponies, and a dead shot at a sta
tionary object at an easy distance. To this
information about them, history had added the
facts that they are grossly fanatical and that
they have been beaten without difficulty
wherever British troops have met them. But
this estimate of the people and .their character,
though sufficiently accurate as far as it goes,
is by no means comprehensive, for just as
the Afghans resemble the Arabs in their law
lessness, bigotry, and personal habits, so also
they are like them in being fervidly poetical.
The Arab's laws are poems, and all the daily cir
cumstances of his life combine to make hjm
romantic and picturesque. Nature provides him
with all the metaphors, tropes, and illustrations of
common talk, and he in return invests every object
of his landscape with all the fancies of his far-
roaming imagination. It is the same with the
Afghans. No people possesses a country more
suggestive to the poetical mind than they do, and
gross and rude though the Afghans are, their
minds an excellently in tone with their surround
ings. Indeed, the squalid, scowling Afghan is a
poem himself, for, rugged in feature as the hills
above him, his speech is as flowery as the valley
he overlooks. It is not only that the soil he
stands on is sanctified by great historical memo
ries, of Hebrew captivity and the ruin of Mede
and Persian, the march of Alexander the Great,
and the on-rush of the first Moslem armies, and
by even grander memories, that are prehistoric,
of the first passage of the world's peoples from
the cradle of nations that lies upon the fron
tier of his country. Every detail about him is
picturesque—from bis name, " the Hon heart,"
to the jessamine that shades him. Stout of
limb and fierce at heart, fearless of man or beast
upon his hills, he leads out his herd to its favourite
pasture, and lies down with his long jezail
resting on its support, and the match ready
burning, to listen for strange footfalls along
the narrow pass, looking, as be lies there in his
shaggy robe of camel's hair, like some watchful
animal of prey. Follow the direction of his eye,
and down below there, where " the pearl stream"
takes a bend round the rocks that persist in bar
ring its way to " the Father of Eivers," you will
see a tent made of a black blanket, its door a
mat of reeds, with a big stone laid on each corner
to keep the hill man's home from being blown away
by the sudden gusts of wind that sweep down
from " Solomon's Throne," and at the door you j
may mark standing stately as a young pine tree,
blue kirtled and blue hooded, the " Spirit of the
Rose," as she feeds the young camel foal from
her hand. At her side lies a shaggy dog, its
nose pointing up the pass, and though at every
sound' among the rocks of prowling leopard or
startled bird it raises its head in inquiry, the!
hill man's wife goes about her duties careless of
danger and thoughtless of her solitude. She
knows that somewhere along the pass her lord's
jezail, "the friend that never lies,"covers the
pathway, and that no foe, be it man or beast,
can come near the black blanket tent unchal
lenged. So she tethers the donkey among the
juiciest herbage, heaps up before the
sick goat a choice pile of thorn tops, and
| goes down to the stream singing. The picture |
| is wild and picturesque enough, but, if you can
| approach the woman, you will be surprised at
the words of her song :
O rose, who art the true cause of the garden 's loveli
ness, ■ i
Why condescendest thou to join in laughter with thorns 1
and weeds?
How oometh it that thou are not conscious of thine
own dignity ?
For thou art the one and only beauteous object of the
parterre.
The songs of the nightingale will not always be made
for thee,
For tiou, G lovely rose! art notorious for thy lack of
constancy.
These are not the sentiments of an altogether
savage race, and though the singer never guesses,
the mystical meaning hidden by the poeit under
his words, there is enough in the pretty subject
and dainty thoughts to prove that the Afghan
appreciates the beautiful in nature. The
song-smiths of the country, moreover, were not,
as most Western poets are, men of culture and
refinement, and yet the elegant Persian cannot
show a more delicate play of fancy than these rude
poet-mystics of Afghanistan. To understand
j fully the varied character of their poems, the
j collection translated by Major Raverty, 0 the
' well-known Pushtoo scholar, must be studied ;
and before he can obtain a glimpse at the
hidden meaning of the poet the student
must know something of the Sufi en
thusiasm, its ardent adoration under symbols of
incomprehensible abstractions, and its straining
through tangles of metaphor and allegory
towards an inexpressible idea. But it will
suffice for our present purpose, which is
simply to show the Afghan to our readers
in yet another phase of his character, to say
that the landscape of the country is not more
varied in feature and in beauty than the I
poetical literature of its people, and that
the Sufi, " the pure people," are mystic
visionaries, who inculcate, in language drawn
from the pleasures and pains of the world,
the highest moral truths and doctrinal pre
cepts. The Afghan, it is enough to say, has
another aspect very different from that of the
bloodthirsty lurking footpad, and it is quite
possible in the exercise of liberal and generous
sympathy to admire the men who admire the
poems of Aiabd-ur-Rahman and Mirza Khan
Ausari:
tl'c