The Kadisah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi | Page 7

Kam, Kem, Khem (hierogl.), in the Demotic Khemi.
“Th’ immortal mind of mortal man!”
we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry;
Whose mind but means his sum
of thought,

an essence of atomic “I.”
Thought is the work of brain and nerve,
in small-skulled idiot poor and mean;
In sickness sick, in sleep
asleep,
and dead when Death lets drop the scene.
“Tush!” quoth the Zâhid, “well we ken
the teaching of the school abhorr’d
“That maketh man automaton,
mind a secretion, soul a word.”
“Of molecules and protoplasm
you matter-mongers prompt to prate;
“Of jelly-speck development
and apes that grew to man’s estate.”
Vain cavil! all that is hath come
either by Mir’acle or by Law;—
Why waste on this your hate and
fear,
why waste on that your love and awe?
Why heap such hatred on a word,
why “Prototype” to type assign,
Why upon matter spirit mass?
wants an appendix your design?
Is not the highest honour his
who from the worst hath drawn the best;
May not your Maker make
the world

from matter, an it suit His hest?
Nay more, the sordider the stuff
the cunninger the workman’s hand:
Cease, then, your own Almighty
Power
to bind, to bound, to understand.
“Reason and Instinct!” How we love
to play with words that please our pride;
Our noble race’s mean
descent
by false forged titles seek to hide!
For “gift divine” I bid you read
the better work of higher brain,
From Instinct diff’ering in degree
as golden mine from leaden vein.
Reason is Life’s sole arbiter,
the magic Laby’rinth’s single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken;
what crosses it can ne’er be true.
“Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!”
Angels and Fools have equal claim
To do what Nature bids them do,
sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!
VIII
There is no Heav’en, there is no Hell;
these be the dreams of baby minds;
Tools of the wily Fetisheer,

to ’fright the fools his cunning blinds.
Learn from the mighty Spi’rits of old
to set thy foot on Heav’en and Hell;
In Life to find thy hell and
heav’en
as thou abuse or use it well.
So deemed the doughty Jew who dared
by studied silence low to lay
Orcus and Hades, lands of shades,
the gloomy night of human day.
Hard to the heart is final death:
fain would an Ens not end in Nil;
Love made the senti’ment kindly
good:
the Priest perverted all to ill.
While Reason sternly bids us die,
Love longs for life beyond the grave:
Our hearts, affections, hopes
and fears
for Life-to-be shall ever crave.
Hence came the despot’s darling dream,
a Church to rule and sway the State;
Hence sprang the train of
countless griefs
in priestly sway and rule innate.
For future Life who dares reply?
No witness at the bar have we;
Save what the brother Potsherd

tells,—
old tales and novel jugglery.
Who e’er return’d to teach the Truth,
the things of Heaven and Hell to limn?
And all we hear is only fit
for grandam-talk and nursery-hymn.
“Have mercy, man!” the Zâhid cries,
“of our best visions rob us not!
“Mankind a future life must have
to balance life’s unequal lot.”
“Nay,” quoth the Magian, “’tis not so;
I draw my wine for one and all,
“A cup for this, a score for that,
e’en as his measure’s great or small:
“Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight;
to poorest passion he was born;
“Who drains the score must e’er
expect
to rue the headache of the morn.”
Safely he jogs along the way
which ‘Golden Mean’ the sages call;
Who scales the brow of
frowning Alp
must face full many a slip and fall.
Here èxtremes meet, anointed Kings
whose crownèd heads uneasy lie,
Whose cup of joy contains no more

than tramps that on the dunghill die.
To fate-doomed Sinner born and bred
for dangling from the gallows-tree;
To Saint who spends his holy
days
in rapt’urous hope his God to see;
To all that breathe our upper air
the hands of Dest’iny ever deal,
In fixed and equal parts, their shares
of joy and sorrow, woe and weal.
“How comes it, then, our span of days
in hunting wealth and fame we spend
“Why strive we (and all
humans strive)
for vain and visionary end?”
Reply: mankind obeys a law
that bids him labour, struggle, strain;
The Sage well knowing its
unworth,
the Fool a-dreaming foolish gain.
And who, ’mid e’en the Fools, but feels
that half the joy is in the race
For wealth and fame and place, nor
sighs
when comes success to crown the chase?
Again: in Hind, Chîn, Franguestân
that accident of birth befell,
Without our choice, our will, our voice:

Faith is an accident as well.
What to the Hindu saith the Frank:
“Denier of the Laws divine!
“However godly-good thy Life,
Hell is the home for thee and thine.”
“Go strain the draught before ’tis drunk,
and learn that