The Kadisah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi | Page 2

a last adieu!
haply some day we meet again;
Yet ne’er the self-same men shall
meet;
the years shall make us other men:
The light of morn has grown to noon,

has paled with eve, and now farewell!
Go, vanish from my Life as
dies
the tinkling of the Camel’s bell.
II
In these drear wastes of sea-born land,
these wilds where none may dwell but He,
What visionary Pasts
revive,
what process of the Years we see:
Gazing beyond the thin blue line
that rims the far horizon-ring,
Our sadden’d sight why haunt these
ghosts,
whence do these spectral shadows spring?
What endless questions vex the thought,
of Whence and Whither, When and How?
What fond and foolish
strife to read
the Scripture writ on human brow;
As stand we percht on point of Time,
betwixt the two Eternities,
Whose awful secrets gathering round
with black profound oppress our eyes.
“This gloomy night, these grisly waves,
these winds and whirlpools loud and dread:
What reck they of our
wretched plight

who Safety’s shore so lightly tread?”
Thus quoth the Bard of Love and Wine,*
whose dream of Heaven ne’er could rise
Beyond the brimming
Kausar-cup
and Houris with the white-black eyes;
0. Hâfiz of Shirâz.
Ah me! my race of threescore years
is short, but long enough to pall
My sense with joyless joys as these,
with Love and Houris, Wine and all.
Another boasts he would divorce
old barren Reason from his bed,
And wed the Vine-maid in her
stead;—
fools who believe a word he said!*
0. Omar-i-Kayyâm, the tent-maker poet of Persia.
And “‘Dust thou art to dust returning.’
ne’er was spoke of human soul”
The Soofi cries, ’tis well for him
that hath such gift to ask its goal.
“And this is all, for this we’re born
to weep a little and to die!”
So sings the shallow bard whose life
still labours at the letter “I.”
“Ear never heard, Eye never saw
the bliss of those who enter in
My heavenly kingdom,” Isâ said,

who wailed our sorrows and our sin:
Too much of words or yet too few!
What to thy Godhead easier than
One little glimpse of Paradise
to ope the eyes and ears of man?
“I am the Truth! I am the Truth!”
we hear the God-drunk gnostic cry
“The microcosm abides in ME;
Eternal Allah’s nought but I!”
Mansûr* was wise, but wiser they
who smote him with the hurlèd stones;
And, though his blood a
witness bore,
no wisdom-might could mend his bones.
0. A famous Mystic stoned for blasphemy.
“Eat, drink, and sport; the rest of life’s
not worth a fillip,” quoth the King;
Methinks the saying saith too
much:
the swine would say the selfsame thing!
Two-footed beasts that browse through life,
by Death to serve as soil design’d,
Bow prone to Earth whereof they
be,
and there the proper pleasures find:
But you of finer, nobler, stuff,
ye, whom to Higher leads the High,
What binds your hearts in

common bond
with creatures of the stall and sty?
“In certain hope of Life-to-come
I journey through this shifting scene”
The Zâhid* snarls and saunters
down
his Vale of Tears with confi’dent mien.
0. The “Philister” of “respectable” belief.
Wiser than Amrân’s Son* art thou,
who ken’st so well the world-to-be,
The Future when the Past is not,
the Present merest dreamery;
0. Moses in the Koran.
What know’st thou, man, of Life? and yet,
forever twixt the womb, the grave,
Thou pratest of the Coming Life,
of Heav’n and Hell thou fain must rave.
The world is old and thou art young;
the world is large and thou art small;
Cease, atom of a moment’s
span,
To hold thyself an All-in-All!
III.
Fie, fie! you visionary things,
ye motes that dance in sunny glow,
Who base and build Eternities
on briefest moment here below;

Who pass through Life liked cagèd birds,
the captives of a despot will;
Still wond’ring How and When and
Why,
and Whence and Whither, wond’ring still;
Still wond’ring how the Marvel came
because two coupling mammals chose
To slake the thirst of fleshly
love,
and thus the “Immortal Being” rose;
Wond’ring the Babe with staring eyes,
perforce compel’d from night to day,
Gript in the giant grasp of Life
like gale-born dust or wind-wrung spray;
Who comes imbecile to the world
’mid double danger, groans, and tears;
The toy, the sport, the waif
and stray
of passions, error, wrath and fears;
Who knows not Whence he came nor Why,
who kens not Whither bound and When,
Yet such is Allah’s choicest
gift,
the blessing dreamt by foolish men;
Who step by step perforce returns
to couthless youth, wan, white and cold,
Lisping again his broken
words

till all the tale be fully told:
Wond’ring the Babe with quenchèd orbs,
an oldster bow’d by burthening years,
How ’scaped the skiff an
hundred storms;
how ’scaped the thread a thousand shears;
How coming to the Feast unbid,
he found the gorgeous