The Kadisah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi | Page 4

’twas good?
The marvel is that man can smile
dreaming his ghostly ghastly dream;-
Better the heedless atomy
that buzzes in the morning beam!
O the dread pathos of our lives!
how durst thou, Allah, thus to play
With Love, Affection, Friendship,
all
that shows the god in mortal clay?
But ah! what ’vaileth man to mourn;
shall tears bring forth what smiles ne’er brought;
Shall brooding

breed a thought of joy?
Ah hush the sigh, forget the thought!
Silence thine immemorial quest,
contain thy nature’s vain complaint
None heeds, none cares for thee
or thine;—
like thee how many came and went?
Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail;
enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death’s icy brink,
but is the dance less full of fun?
IV
What Truths hath gleaned that Sage consumed
by many a moon that waxt and waned?
What Prophet-strain be his to
sing?
What hath his old Experience gained?
There is no God, no man-made God;
a bigger, stronger, crueller man;
Black phantom of our baby-fears,
ere Thought, the life of Life, began.
Right quoth the Hindu Prince of old,*
“An Ishwara for one I nill,
Th’ almighty everlasting Good
who cannot ’bate th’ Eternal Ill:”
0. Buddha.

“Your gods may be, what shows they are?”
hear China’s Perfect Sage declare;*
“And being, what to us be they
who dwell so darkly and so far?”
0. Confucius.
“All matter hath a birth and death;
’tis made, unmade and made anew;
“We choose to call the Maker
‘God’:—
such is the Zâhid’s owly view.
“You changeful finite Creatures strain”
(rejoins the Drawer of the Wine)*
“The dizzy depths of Inf’inite
Power
to fathom with your foot of twine”;
0. The Soofi or Gnostic opposed to the Zâhid.
“Poor idols of man’s heart and head
with the Divine Idea to blend;
“To preach as ‘Nature’s Common
Course’
what any hour may shift or end.”
“How shall the Shown pretend to ken
aught of the Showman or the Show?
“Why meanly bargain to
believe,
which only means thou ne’er canst know?
“How may the passing Now contain

the standing Now—Eternity?—
“An endless is_ without a _was,
the be_ and never the _to-be?
“Who made your Maker? If Self-made,
why fare so far to fare the worse
“Sufficeth not a world of worlds,
a self-made chain of universe?
“Grant an Idea, Primal Cause,
the Causing Cause, why crave for more?
“Why strive its depth and
breadth to mete,
to trace its work, its aid to ’implore?
“Unknown, Incomprehensible,
whate’er you choose to call it, call;
“But leave it vague as airy space,
dark in its darkness mystical.
“Your childish fears would seek a Sire,
by the non-human God defin’d,
“What your five wits may wot ye
weet;
what is you please to dub ‘design’d;’
“You bring down Heav’en to vulgar Earth;
your maker like yourselves you make,
“You quake to own a reign of
Law,
you pray the Law its laws to break;
“You pray, but hath your thought e’er weighed

how empty vain the prayer must be,
“That begs a boon already
giv’en,
or craves a change of law to see?
“Say, Man, deep learnèd in the Scheme
that orders mysteries sublime,
“How came it this was Jesus, that
was Judas from the birth of Time?
“How I the tiger, thou the lamb;
again the Secret, prithee, show
“Who slew the slain, bowman or bolt
or Fate that drave the man, the bow?
“Man worships self: his God is Man;
the struggling of the mortal mind
“To form its model as ’twould be,
the perfect of itself to find.
“The God became sage, priest and scribe
where Nilus’ serpent made the vale;
“A gloomy Brahm in glowing
Ind,
a neutral something cold and pale:
“Amid the high Chaldean hills
a moulder of the heavenly spheres;
“On Guebre steppes the
Timeless-God
who governs by his dual peers:
“In Hebrew tents the Lord that led

His leprous slaves to fight and jar;
“Yahveh,* Adon or Elohîm,
the God that smites, the Man of War.
0. Jehovah.
“The lovely Gods of lib’ertine Greece,
those fair and frail humanities
“Whose homes o’erlook’d the Middle
Sea,
where all Earth’s beauty cradled lies,
“Ne’er left its blessèd bounds, nor sought
the barb’arous climes of barb’arous gods
“Where Odin of the dreary
North
o’er hog and sickly mead-cup nods:
“And when, at length, ‘Great Pan is dead’
uprose the loud and dol’orous cry
“A glamour wither’d on the
ground,
a splendour faded in the sky.
“Yea, Pan was dead, the Nazar’ene came
and seized his seat beneath the sun,
“The votary of the Riddle-god,
whose one is three and three is one;
“Whose sadd’ening creed of herited Sin
spilt o’er the world its cold grey spell;
“In every vista showed a
grave,
and ’neath the grave the glare of Hell;

“Till all Life’s Po’esy sinks to prose;
romance to dull Real’ity fades;
“Earth’s flush of gladness pales in
gloom
and God again to man degrades.
“Then the lank