The Kadisah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi | Page 9

wage eternal war,
to know thy self forever strain,
Thine ignorance of thine ignorance is
thy fiercest foe, thy deadliest bane;
That blunts thy sense, and dulls thy taste;
that deafs thine ears, and blinds thine eyes;
Creates the thing that
never was,
the Thing that ever is defies.
The finite Atom infinite
that forms thy circle’s centre-dot,
So full-sufficient for itself,
for other selves existing not,

Finds the world mighty as ’tis small;
yet must be fought the unequal fray;
A myriad giants here; and there
a pinch of dust, a clod of clay.
Yes! maugre all thy dreams of peace
still must the fight unfair be fought;
Where thou mayst learn the
noblest lore,
to know that all we know is nought.
True to thy Nature, to Thy self,
Fame and Disfame nor hope nor fear:
Enough to thee the small still
voice
aye thund’ering in thine inner ear.
From self-approval seek applause:
What ken not men thou kennest, thou!
Spurn ev’ry idol others raise:
Before thine own Ideal bow:
Be thine own Deus: Make self free,
liberal as the circling air:
Thy Thought to thee an Empire be;
break every prison’ing lock and bar:
Do thou the Ought to self aye owed;
here all the duties meet and blend,
In widest sense, withouten care
of what began, for what shall end.
Thus, as thou view the Phantom-forms

which in the misty Past were thine,
To be again the thing thou wast
with honest pride thou may’st decline;
And, glancing down the range of years,
fear not thy future self to see;
Resign’d to life, to death resign’d,
as though the choice were nought to thee.
On Thought itself feed not thy thought;
nor turn from Sun and Light to gaze,
At darkling cloisters paved with
tombs,
where rot the bones of bygone days:
“Eat not thy heart,” the Sages said;
“nor mourn the Past, the buried Past;”
Do what thou dost, be strong,
be brave;
and, like the Star, nor rest nor haste.
Pluck the old woman from thy breast:
Be stout in woe, be stark in weal;
Do good for Good is good to do:
Spurn bribe of Heav’en and threat of Hell.
To seek the True, to glad the heart,
such is of life the HIGHER LAW,
Whose differ’ence is the Man’s
degree,
the Man of gold, the Man of straw.
See not that something in Mankind

that rouses hate or scorn or strife,
Better the worm of Izrâil*
than Death that walks in form of life.
0. The Angel of Death.
Survey thy kind as One whose wants
in the great Human Whole unite;*
The Homo rising high from earth
to seek the Heav’ens of Life-in-Light;
0. The “Great Man” of the Enochites and the Mormons.
And hold Humanity one man,
whose universal agony
Still strains and strives to gain the goal,
where agonies shall cease to be.
Believe in all things; none believe;
judge not nor warp by “Facts” the thought;
See clear, hear clear, tho’
life may seem
Mâyâ and Mirage, Dream and Naught.
Abjure the Why and seek the How:
the God and gods enthroned on high,
Are silent all, are silent still;
nor hear thy voice, nor deign reply.
The Now, that indivis’ible point
which studs the length of inf’inite line
Whose ends are nowhere, is
thine all,
the puny all thou callest thine.
Perchance the law some Giver hath:

Let be! let be! what canst thou know?
A myriad races came and went;
this Sphinx hath seen them come and go.
Haply the Law that rules the world
allows to man the widest range;
And haply Fate’s a Theist-word,
subject to human chance and change.
This “I” may find a future Life,
a nobler copy of our own,
Where every riddle shall be ree’d,
where every knowledge shall be known;
Where ’twill be man’s to see the whole
of what on Earth he sees in part;
Where change shall ne’er surcharge
the thought;
nor hope defer’d shall hurt the heart.
But!—faded flow’er and fallen leaf
no more shall deck the parent tree;
And man once dropt by Tree of
Life
what hope of other life has he?
The shatter’d bowl shall know repair;
the riven lute shall sound once more;
But who shall mend the clay of
man,
the stolen breath to man restore?
The shiver’d clock again shall strike;

the broken reed shall pipe again:
But we, we die, and Death is one,
the doom of brutes, the doom of men.
Then, if Nirwânâ* round our life
with nothingness, ’tis haply best;
Thy toils and troubles, want and
woe
at length have won their guerdon—Rest.
0. Comparative annihilation.
Cease, Abdû, cease! Thy song is sung,
nor think the gain the singer’s prize;
Till men hold Ignor’ance deadly
sin,
till man deserves his title “Wise:”*
0. “Homo sapiens.”
In Days to come, Days slow to dawn,
when Wisdom deigns to dwell with men,
These echoes of a voice
long stilled
haply shall wake responsive strain: