on! to the goal,
Though veiled in the billows that roll
Over Orion.—The fear
Of the Distances never was liege
Of our hearts; but the Mazes besiege
The bridges of Faith on our way.
God of our vision austere,
Hear us and guide us today.
Hear us the Captains of Sorrow—
The tillers of the soil of defeat—
The lights of the oft promised morrow,
Whose false dawns thy promise repeat.
Our name and our purpose are written
In blood on the tablets of Time;
Our spirit, though frequently smitten
To the dust, has arisen, sublime
And triumphant, again and again;
Our torch, though extinguished, was never
Relinquished; our sword and our pen
Are brandished forever and ever.
Yea, the Ideal’s undying desire
And the wreaths of defeat it has won,
Their story, in letters of fire,
Is limned on the brow of the sun.
And not till a new world ’s begotten
Of the womb of our own, will the word
Of the soul of the earth be forgotten,
Or the cry of the earth be unheard.
’T is our word, ’t is our cry, ’t is our yearning,
Which shall mark even the ending of Time;
For no cycle of darkness returning
Shall reach to the path we must climb,
Or efface from our sight the supernal
Beauty of Truth born of Dream.
God of the vision eternal,
We are thine, though in darkness we seem,
But hear us, O hear us today
And help us again to our way.
Badruddin
Seek what you shall e’er possess,
O Badruddin,
Although it be a will-o’-the-wisp
Of the Unseen,
Which you may never behold
Until my suns and satellites are cold.
And in the seeking you shall find
The hidden jewels of the soul and mind;
And every jewel shall reveal
Things divine
Even in a Sufi’s logic wheel,
Yea, even in the lowing kine.
The eyewash, O lone Badruddin, I bring
Is of the first dews of the first-born spring.
Apply it and behold!
Your dog-bitten sandals are transformed into gold;
Your staff, sand-eaten and far-wandering,
Is bursting into foliage, blossoming,
Bearing fruits of wondrous lush and glow;
And underneath the heavy-laden tree
A maid, whose face dispels all human woe,
Is cooking sesame for you and me.
Cast off the garments of the world
And wear the sacred shades,
Whose color of contentment never fades,
And sit beside me with the golden fawn,
Whose name is Eternal Dawn.
O thou Belovéd, every word of thine
Is like a draught of purple wine;
Every syllable
Is like the singing of the bulbul.
More potent are they than the magic lore
Which to the blind the sight restore,
As now to one, who though a pilgrim old,
Is but an infant in the cradle of love.
Yea, O thou incomparably Sweet,
Thy words are to mine eyes a healing kohl,
Musk to my nostrils, balm to my soul,
Strengthening ointments to my feet.
And what, in the stores and treasures of the world,
Is equal unto this?
Wealth and Beauty, Fame and Power,
They are but mirages in the boundless waste
That separates me from thee—for an hour.
Once I tarried at a Well in an Oasis fair
But in the cup I lifted to my lips
I saw the image of thy wrath
And my despair:—
I dashed against a rock the common clay
And hastened away.
Now, O thou Beloved, I come to thee:
With thy beauty drunk and dumb;
Burdened with thy wealth, and lame;
Ushered by thy liveried Fame;
In thy glory garbed I come.
But I tremble at thy threshold lest the thorns in my feet
The story of my sacrifice repeat;
I tremble at thy threshold lest the flowers of my heart
Betray the painted lips of conscious art;
I tremble at thy threshold lest the eyes
That long have sought to behold but once thy face,
Deserve not even thy shadow to embrace.
The Sufi
Lulled in the purple darkness is my soul,
Behind the curtain, Allah, of my sight,
Where recreative waves of wonder roll
From sad seas of color over dead seas of light:—
I close my eyes and lo, the laden Night
Stops at the ivory gate to pay thy toll
To my soul.
And with it Wealth in Destitution’s van,
And power in the chariot of Dole,
And Fame upon the skeleton she stole
From Death, Ambition, too, amidst her clan,
Spurring her jaded nag:—the Caravan
Of Life is at the gate to pay thy toll
To my soul.
They pass: I open my eyes: and as I try
To con the cruel pages of the scroll
Which Censure left in fragments at their goal,
Then suddenly, illumining the sky,
A form of grace and beauty I descry.
’T is Love, O Allah, come to pay thy toll
To my soul.
But once, while lingering in the doleful shades,
Among the fallen, wine-stained colonnades
Of what was once thy temple, where still troll,
With languid step, the spirit of pagan maids,
I saw thee, Allah, coming through the glades
With food of love and from thy scrip I stole
A jasmine for my hungry soul.
The Fugitive
I saw Thee following me,
I heard Thee calling me,
I even felt Thine arrows in my tears;
I know Thou art shadowing me,
And wilt yet, forestalling me,
Whip out the vanities of all my years.
I ran and still I run away from Thee
Through maze and mirage of mortality;—
Over the hot sands and the frozen lakes,
Across the sable wilderness that breaks
In fragrant moors, I ran to hills of dreams,
Up to the secret borderland that gleams
Eternally, casting its shafts of light,
From every incommunicable height,
Upon the spinning feet of humankind.
O, how I leaped from peak to peak to find
The path to the azure dance-hall of the world,
Whose dome is gemmed, whose portals are empearled
With hearts that melt and crystallize and shine—
With frozen music, frozen beads of wine—
And whose laughter echoes through the spinning spheres,
Where we were taught to dance in former years.
Yea, I, who lit Thine altar, as a boy,
And nursed in incense fumes my vision of joy,
And like a roebuck leaped across the rills,
And danced like sparks of sunlight o’er the hills,
To be, at early morn and eventide,
The first of acolytes that served with pride
Thy venerable priests, alas! one day,
Casting my shame and piety aside,
I snuffed the candles out and walked away
Into the dazzling night of dance and song,
Into the temple of the merry throng.
And ever since, a fugitive from Thee,
Shod with Thy lightning, chuckling oft with glee,
Unburdened and unfettered and undaunted,
With naught, not e’en my shamelessness to hide,
And
