Simon Ockley (The Historian of the Saracens)

Simon Ockley
(The Historian of the Saracens[1])

Harshly the world too oft has treated those
Who best deserved its honours and rewards;
Bestowing both most blindly; and the fools
Could bear their galling chains until the pain
Became too dreadful to be longer borne. 5
Is it because there needs Adversity
To rouse our souls from slumb’ring in the sleep
Of sensuous, or even sensual torpor,
Such seeming wrongs so long have stain’d the globe,— 10
Permitted by its Maker for great good
To them and others?—can the nations learn
Only through suffering that they must confirm
Both one and all to laws immutable?
A sterling scholar, worth a better fate 15
Than which he so patently endured
Methinks was Ockley, who had learnt to know
That wisdom is a far more precious thing
Than worldly riches. Much to him we owe—
The sturdy student, who in eastern lore 20
Delved deeply, ere his countrymen had learnt
To prize its worth—bringing us to light
Knowledge which then lay deeply hid in mines
Where none else cared to work; till Saracens
Seem’d to march out once more in light of day, 25
As they had lived on earth in days of yore,
Mating with mankind better than before.
Even Cambridge Castle to the prisoner
By his well-regulated mind was made
More pleasant than his Swavesey vicarage, 30
With Cambridge flowers, and legends long since dim
Of Zouch’s[2] castle, and the monastery
Of black monks under Angeirs, and old knights
Whose tombs his church o’ercanopied to this day.


But only for a time can wrong endure: 35
The name of Ockley now is honour’d well,
Whilst proud men of his day, who look’d askance
On the poor plodding scholar, are forgot
As though they never once on earth had been,
Little they though, whilst they were rioting 40
On choicest fare, and he was lacking bread,
His wants unheeded in their revelry,
That men like Gibbon would revere the man,
And many a student own a debt to him
Long after he from earth had pass’d away. 45
Cheer up, then, worker for the common good,
E’en though thy labours seem to be in vain,
And thou despised by those thou fain would serve!
I thou work wisely in a righteous cause,
From higher motives than thy fellows’ praise, 50
Thou ne’er wilt fail, although thou cannot see
The acorns thou hast planted stand as oaks,
And e’en few flower-seeds blossom in the path.
Nothing is ever lost: in thine own soul,
If nowhere else, thou may be sure to find 55
All thou hast planted been their fruits for aye.

by Goerge Markham Tweddell

Blank verse [in M/S], unpaged [but notionally pp. 100-103.]
[1 Edward Gibbon and Simon Ockley, ‘History of the Saracen Empire’, London,
1870. Ockley was Lingard professor of Arabic, Cambridge University, fl. early
1700.
2 The Zouch family were lords of Swavesey.]

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"The History of the Saracen Empires is a book written by Simon Ockley of Cambridge University and first published in the early 18th century. The book has been reprinted many times including at London in 1894. It was published in two volumes that appeared a decade apart."
Read more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Saracens