THE KASÎDAH VIII, 117, 128

“You all are right, you all are wrong,”
 we hear the careless Soofi say,
“For each believes his glimm’ering lamp
 to be the gorgeous light of day.”

“Thy faith why false, my faith why true?
 ’tis all the work of Thine and Mine,
“The fond and foolish love of self
 that makes the Mine excel the Thine.”

Cease then to mumble rotten bones;
 and strive to clothe with flesh and blood
The skel’eton; and to shape a Form
 that all shall hail as fair and good.

THE KASÎDAH IV, 109, 120

“Then the lank Arab foul with sweat,
 the drainer of the camel’s dug,
“Gorged with his leek-green lizard’s meat,
 clad in his filthy rag and rug,

“Bore his fierce Allah o’er his sands
 and broke, like lava-burst upon
“The realms where reigned pre-Adamite Kings,
 where rose the Grand Kayânian throne.

“Who now of ancient Kayomurs,
 of Zâl or Rustam cares to sing,
“Whelmed by the tempest of the tribes
 that called the Camel-driver King?

THE KASÎDAH IV, 73, 84

“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.

THE KASÎDAH IV, 61, 72

“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 KASÎDAH III, 37, 46

How Life was nought but ray of sun
 that clove the darkness thick and blind,
The ravings of the reckless storm,
 the shrieking of the rav’ening wind;

How lovely visions ’guiled his sleep,
 aye fading with the break of morn,
Till every sweet became a sour,
 till every rose became a thorn;

Till dust and ashes met his eyes
 wherever turned their saddened gaze;
The wrecks of joys and hopes and loves,
 the rubbish of his wasted days;

The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi

TO THE READER

The Translator has ventured to entitle a “Lay of the Higher Law” the following composition, which aims at being in advance of its time; and he has not feared the danger of collision with such unpleasant forms as the “Higher Culture.” The principles which justify the name are as follows:—

The Author asserts that Happiness and Misery are equally divided and distributed in the world.

He makes Self-cultivation, with due regard to others, the sole and sufficient object of human life.

He suggests that the affections, the sympathies, and the “divine gift of Pity” are man’s highest enjoyments.

He advocates suspension of judgment, with a proper suspicion of “Facts, the idlest of superstitions.”

Finally, although destructive to appearance, he is essentially reconstructive