THE KASÎDAH IX, 153, 164

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.

THE KASÎDAH IX, 105, 116

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.

THE KASÎDAH IX, 1, 12

How then shall man so order life
 that when his tale of years is told,
Like sated guest he wend his way;
 how shall his even tenour hold?

Despite the Writ that stores the skull;
 despite the Table and the Pen;
Maugre the Fate that plays us down,
 her board the world, her pieces men?

How when the light and glow of life
 wax dim in thickly gath’ering gloom,
Shall mortal scoff at sting of Death,
 shall scorn the victory of the Tomb?

THE KASÎDAH VIII, 141, 152

Enough to think such things may be:
 to say they are not or they are
Were folly: leave them all to Fate,
 nor wage on shadows useless war.

Do what thy manhood bids thee do,
 from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies
 who makes and keeps his self-made laws.

All other Life is living Death,
 a world where none but Phantoms dwell,
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice,
 a tinkling of the camel-bell.

THE KASÎDAH VII, 49, 60

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.”

THE KASÎDAH V, 25, 36

Delusion, Ign’orance! Long ere Man
 drew upon Earth his earliest breath
The world was one contin’uous scene
 of anguish, torture, prey and Death;

Where hideous Theria of the wild
 rended their fellows limb by limb;
Where horrid Saurians of the sea
 in waves of blood were wont to swim:

The “fair young Earth” was only fit
 to spawn her frightful monster-brood;
Now fiery hot, now icy frore,
 now reeking wet with steamy flood.

THE KASÎDAH IV, 121, 132

“Where are the crown of Kay Khusraw,
 the sceptre of Anûshirwân,
“The holy grail of high Jamshîd,
 Afrâsiyab’s hall?—Canst tell me, man?

“Gone, gone, where I and thou must go,
 borne by the winnowing wings of Death,
“The Horror brooding over life,
 and nearer brought with every breath:

“Their fame hath filled the Seven Climes,
 they rose and reigned, they fought and fell,
“As swells and swoons across the wold
 the tinkling of the Camel’s bell.”

THE KASÎDAH II, 61, 72

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.