LXXI
And though around the temple they should run
For seventy times and seven, and in the sun
Of mad devotion drool, their prayers are still
Like their desires of feasting-fancies spun.
teach,
Are one with those who from the pulpit preach;
They pray, and slay, and pass away, and yet
Our ills are as the pebbles on the beach.
Are one with those who from the pulpit preach;
They pray, and slay, and pass away, and yet
Our ills are as the pebbles on the beach.
LXXII
Oh! let them in the marshes grope, or ride
Their jaded Myths along the mountain-side;
Come up with me, O Brother, to the heights
Where Reason is the prophet and the guide.
LXXIII
“What is thy faith and creed,” they ask of me,
“And who art thou? Unseal thy pedigree.”—
I am the child of Time, my tribe, mankind,
And now this world’s my caravanseri.
LXXIV
Swathe thee in wool, my Sufi friend, and go
Thy way; in cotton I the wiser grow;
But we ourselves are shreds of earth, and soon
The Tailor of the Universe will sew.
LXXV
Ay! suddenly the mystic Hand will seal
The saint’s devotion and the sinner’s weal;
They worship Saturn, but I worship One
Before whom Saturn and the Heavens kneel.
LXXVI
Among the crumbling ruins of the creeds
The Scout upon his camel played his reeds
And called out to his people—“Let us hence!
The pasture here is full of noxious weeds.”
LXXVII47
Among us falsehood is proclaimed aloud,
But truth is whispered to the phantom bowed
Of conscience; ay! and Wrong is ever crowned,
While Right and Reason are denied a shroud.
LXXVIII
And why in this dark Kingdom tribute pay?
With clamant multitudes why stop to pray?
Oh! hear the inner Voice:—“If thou’lt be right,
Do what they deem is wrong, and go thy way.”
LXXIX
Thy way unto the Sun the spaces through
Where king Orion’s black-eyed houris slew
The Mother of Night to guide the Wings that bear
The flame divine hid in a drop of dew.
LXXX
Hear ye who in the dust of ages creep,
And in the halls of wicked masters sleep:—
Arise! and out of this wan weariness
Where Allah’s laughter makes the Devil weep.
LXXXI
Arise! for lo! the Laughter and the Weeping
Reveal the Weapon which the Master’s keeping
Above your heads; Oh! take it up and strike!
The lion of tyranny is only sleeping.
LXXXII
Evil and Virtue? Shadows on the street
Of Fate and Vanity—but shadows meet
When in the gloaming they are hast’ning forth
To drink with Night annihilation sweet.
LXXXIII
And thus the Sun will write and will efface
The mystic symbols which the sages trace
In vain, for all the worlds of God are stored
In his enduring vessels Time and Space.
LXXXIV
For all my learning ’s but a veil, I guess,
Veiling the phantom of my nothingness;
Howbeit, there are those who think me wise,
And those who think me—even these I bless.
LXXXV
And all my years, as vapid as my lay,
Are bitter morsels of a mystic day—
The day of Fate, who carries in his lap
December snows and snow-white flowers of May.
LXXXVI
Allah, my sleep is woven through, it seems,
With burning threads of night and golden beams;
But when my dreams are evil they come true;
When they are not, they are, alas! but dreams.
LXXXVII
The subtle ways of Destiny I know;
In me she plays her game of “Give and Go.”
Misfortune I receive in cash, but joy,
In drafts on Heaven or on the winds that blow.
LXXXVIII
I give and go, grim Destiny—I play
Upon this checker-board of Night and Day
The dark game with thee, but the day will come
When one will turn the Board the other way.
LXXXIX
If my house-swallow, laboring with zest,
Felt like myself the burden of unrest,
Unlightened by inscrutable designs,
She would not build her young that cozy nest.
XC48
Thy life with guiltless life-blood do not stain—
Hunt not the children of the woods; in vain
Thou’lt try one day to wash thy bloody hand:
Nor hunter here nor hunted long remain.
XCI
Oh! cast my dust away from thee, and doff
Thy cloak of sycophancy and like stuff:
I’m but a shadow on the sandy waste—
Enough of thy duplicity, enough!
XCII
Behold! the Veil that hid thy soul is torn
And all thy secrets on the winds are borne:
The hand of Sin has written on thy face
“Awake, for these untimely furrows warn!”
XCIII4950
A prince of souls, ’tis sung in ancient lay,
One morning sought a vesture of the clay;
He came into the Pottery, the fool—
The lucky fool was warned to stay away.
XCIV5152
But I was not. Oh! that the Fates decree
That I now cast aside this clay of me;
My soul and body wedded for a while
Are sick and would that separation be.
XCV53
“Thou shalt not kill!”—Thy words, O God, we heed,
Though thy two Soul-devouring Angels feed
Thy Promise of another life on this—
To have spared us both, it were a boon indeed.
XCVI54
Oh! that some one would but return to tell
If old Nubakht is burning now in hell,
Or if the workers for the Prophet’s prize
Are laughing at his Paradisal sell.
XCVII
Once I have tried to string a few Pearl-seeds
Upon my Rosary of wooden beads;
But I have searched, and I have searched in vain
For pearls in all the caverns of the creeds
XCVIII
And in the palaces of wealth I found
Some beads of wisdom scattered on the ground,
Around the throne of Power, beneath the feet
Of fair-faced slaves with flowers of folly crowned.
XCIX
Thy wealth can shed no
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