The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi

The hour is nigh; the waning Queen

walks forth to rule the later night;

Crownd with the sparkle of a Star,

and throned on orb of ashen light:

The Wolf-tail* sweeps the paling East

to leave a deeper gloom behind,

And Dawn uprears her shining head,

sighing with semblance of a wind:

* The false dawn.

The highlands catch yon Orient gleam,

while purpling still the lowlands lie;

And pearly mists, the morning-pride,

soar incense-like to greet the sky.

The horses neigh, the camels groan,

the torches gleam, the cressets flare;

The town of canvas falls, and man

with din and dint invadeth air:

The Golden Gates swing right and left;

up springs the Sun with flamy brow;

The dew-cloud melts in gush of light;

brown Earth is bathed in morning-glow.

Slowly they wind athwart the wild,

and while young Day his anthem swells,

Sad falls upon my yearning ear

the tinkling of the Camel-bells:

Oer fiery wastes and frozen wold,

oer horrid hill and gloomy glen,

The home of grisly beast and Ghoul,*

the haunts of wilder, grislier men;

* The Demon of the Desert.

With the brief gladness of the Palms,

that tower and sway oer seething plain,

Fraught with the thoughts of rustling shade,

and welling spring, and rushing rain;

With the short solace of the ridge,

by gentle zephyrs played upon,

Whose breezy head and bosky side

front seas of cooly celadon;

Tis theirs to pass with joy and hope,

whose souls shall ever thrill and fill

Dreams of the Birthplace and the Tomb,

visions of Allahs Holy Hill.*

* Arafat, near Mecca.

But we? Another shift of scene,

another pang to rack the heart;

Why meet we on the bridge of Time

to change one greeting and to part?

We meet to part; yet asks my sprite,

Part we to meet? Ah! is it so?

Mans fancy-made Omniscience knows,

who made Omniscience nought can know.

Why must we meet, why must we part,

why must we bear this yoke of MUST,

Without our leave or askt or given,

by tyrant Fate on victim thrust?

That Eve so gay, so bright, so glad,

this Morn so dim, and sad, and grey;

Strange that lifes Registrar should write

this day a day, that day a day!

Mine eyes, my brain, my heart, are sad,

sad is the very core of me;

All wearies, changes, passes, ends;

alas! the Birthdays injury!

Friends of my youth, a last adieu!

haply some day we meet again;

Yet neer the self-same men shall meet;

the years shall make us other men:

The light of morn has grown to noon,

has paled with eve, and now farewell!

Go, vanish from my Life as dies

the tinkling of the Camels bell.

In these drear wastes of sea-born land,

these wilds where none may dwell but He,

What visionary Pasts revive,

what process of the Years we see:

Gazing beyond the thin blue line

that rims the far horizon-ring,

Our saddend sight why haunt these ghosts,

whence do these spectral shadows spring?

What endless questions vex the thought,

of Whence and Whither, When and How?

What fond and foolish strife to read

the Scripture writ on human brow;

As stand we percht on point of Time,

betwixt the two Eternities,

Whose awful secrets gathering round

with black profound oppress our eyes.

This gloomy night, these grisly waves,

these winds and whirlpools loud and dread:

What reck they of our wretched plight

who Safetys shore so lightly tread?

Thus quoth the Bard of Love and Wine,*

whose dream of Heaven neer could rise

Beyond the brimming Kausar-cup

and Houris with the white-black eyes;

* Hafiz of Shiraz.

Ah me! my race of threescore years

is short, but long enough to pall

My sense with joyless joys as these,

with Love and Houris, Wine and all.

Another boasts he would divorce

old barren Reason from his bed,

And wed the Vine-maid in her stead;

fools who believe a word he said!*

* Omar-i-Kayyam, the tent-maker poet of Persia.

And Dust thou art to dust returning.

neer was spoke of human soul

The Soofi cries, tis well for him

that hath such gift to ask its goal.

And this is all, for this were born

to weep a little and to die!

So sings the shallow bard whose life

still labours at the letter I.

Ear never heard, Eye never saw

the bliss of those who enter in

My heavenly kingdom, Isa said,

who wailed our sorrows and our sin:

Too much of words or yet too few!

What to thy Godhead easier than

One little glimpse of Paradise

to ope the eyes and ears of man?

I am the Truth! I am the Truth!

we hear the God-drunk gnostic cry

The microcosm abides in ME;

Eternal Allahs nought but I!

Mans?r* was wise, but wiser they

who smote him with the hurlèd stones;

And, though his blood a witness bore,

no wisdom-might could mend his bones.

* A famous Mystic stoned for blasphemy.

Eat, drink, and sport; the rest of lifes

not worth a fillip, quoth the King;

Methinks the saying saith too much:

the swine would say the selfsame thing!

Two-footed beasts that browse through life,

by Death to serve as soil designd,

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 Zahid* snarls and saunters down

his Vale of Tears with confident mien.

* The Philister of respectable belief.

Wiser than Amrans Son* art thou,

who kenst so well the world-to-be,

The Future when the Past is not,

the Present merest dreamery;

* Moses in the Koran.

What knowst thou, man, of Life? and yet,

forever twixt the womb, the grave,

Thou pratest of the Coming Life,

of Heavn and Hell thou fain must rave.

The world is old and thou art young;

the world is large and thou art small;

Cease, atom of a moments span,

To hold thyself an All-in-All!

Fie, fie! you visionary things,

ye motes that dance in sunny glow,

Who base and build Eternities

on briefest moment here below;

Who pass through Life liked cagèd birds,

the captives of a despot will;

Still wondring How and When and Why,

and Whence and Whither, wondring still;

Still wondring how the Marvel came

because two coupling mammals chose

To slake the thirst of fleshly love,

and thus the Immortal Being rose;

Wondring the Babe with staring eyes,

perforce compeld from night to day,

Gript in the giant grasp of Life

like gale-born dust or wind-wrung spray;

Who comes imbecile to the world

mid double danger, groans, and tears;

The toy, the sport, the waif and stray

of passions, error, wrath and fears;

Who knows not Whence he came nor Why,

who kens not Whither bound and When,

Yet such is Allahs choicest gift,

the blessing dreamt by foolish men;

Who step by step perforce returns

to couthless youth, wan, white and cold,

Lisping again his broken words

till all the tale be fully told:

Wondring the Babe with quenchèd orbs,

an oldster bowd by burthening years,

How scaped the skiff an hundred storms;

how scaped the thread a thousand shears;

How coming to the Feast unbid,

he found the gorgeous table spread

With the fair-seeming Sodom-fruit,

with stones that bear the shape of bread:

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 ravening 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;

How every high heroic Thought

that longed to breathe empyrean air,

Failed of its feathers, fell to earth,

and perisht of a sheer despair;

How, dowerd with heritage of brain,

whose might has split the solar ray,

His rest is grossest coarsest earth,

a crown of gold on brow of clay;

This House whose frame be flesh and bone,

mortard with blood and faced with skin,

The home of sickness, dolours, age;

unclean without, impure within:

Sans ray to cheer its inner gloom,

the chambers haunted by the Ghost,

Darkness his name, a cold dumb Shade

stronger than all the heavnly host.

This tube, an enigmatic pipe,

whose end was laid before begun,

That lengthens, broadens, shrinks and breaks;

puzzle, machine, automaton;

The first of Pots the Potter made

by Chrysorrhoas blue-green wave;*

Methinks I see him smile to see

what guerdon to the world he gave!

* The Abana, River of Damascus.

How Life is dim, unreal, vain,

like scenes that round the drunkard reel;

How Being meaneth not to be;

to see and hear, smell, taste and feel.

A drop in Oceans boundless tide,

unfathomd waste of agony;

Where millions live their horrid lives

by making other millions die.

How with a heart that would through love

to Universal Love aspire,

Man woos infernal chance to smite,

as Minarets draw the Thunder-fire.

How Earth on Earth builds tower and wall,

to crumble at a touch of Time;

How Earth on Earth from Sh?nar-plain

the heights of Heaven fain would climb.

How short this Life, how long withal;

how false its weal, how true its woes,

This fever-fit with paroxysms

to mark its opening and its close.

Ah! gay the day with shine of sun,

and bright the breeze, and blithe the throng

Met on the River-bank to play,

when I was young, when I was young:

Such general joy could never fade;

and yet the chilling whisper came

One face had paled, one form had failed;

had fled the bank, had swum the stream;

Still revellers danced, and sang, and trod

the hither bank of Times deep tide,

Still one by one they left and fared

to the far misty thither side;

And now the last hath slipt away

yon drear Death-desert to explore,

And now one Pilgrim worn and lorn

still lingers on the lonely shore.

Yes, Life in youth-tide standeth still;

in manhood streameth soft and slow;

See, as it nears the abysmal goal

how fleet the waters flash and flow!

And Deaths are twain; the Deaths we see

drop like the leaves in windy Fall;

But ours, our own, are ruined worlds,

a globe collapst, last end of all.

We live our lives with rogues and fools,

dead and alive, alive and dead,

We die twixt one who feels the pulse

and one who frets and clouds the head:

And,oh, the Pity!hardly conned

the lesson comes its fatal term;

Fate bids us bundle up our books,

and bear them bodily to the worm:

Hardly we learn to wield the blade

before the wrist grows stiff and old;

Hardly we learn to ply the pen

ere Thought and Fancy faint with cold.

Hardly we find the path of love,

to sink the self, forget the I,

When sad suspicion grips the heart,

when Man, the Man begins to die:

Hardly we scale the wisdom-heights,

and sight the Pisgah-scene around,

And breathe the breath of heavenly air,

and hear the Spheres harmonious sound;

When swift the Camel-rider spans

the howling waste, by Kismet sped,

And of his Magic Wand a wave

hurries the quick to join the dead.*

* Death in Arabia rides a Camel, not a pale horse.

How sore the burden, strange the strife;

how full of splendour, wonder, fear;

Life, atom of that Infinite Space

that stretcheth twixt the Here and There.

How Thought is impotent to divine

the secret which the gods defend,

The Why of birth and life and death,

that Isis-veil no hand may rend.

Eternal Morrows make our Day;

our Is is aye to be till when

Night closes in; tis all a dream,

and yet we die,and then and THEN?

And still the Weaver plies his loom,

whose warp and woof is wretched Man

Weaving th unpatternd dark design,

so dark we doubt it owns a plan.

Dost not, O Maker, blush to hear,

amid the storm of tears and blood,

Man say Thy mercy made what is,

and saw the made and said twas good?

The marvel is that man can smile

dreaming his ghostly ghastly dream;-

Better the heedless atomy

that buzzes in the morning beam!

O the dread pathos of our lives!

how durst thou, Allah, thus to play

With Love, Affection, Friendship, all

that shows the god in mortal clay?

But ah! what vaileth man to mourn;

shall tears bring forth what smiles neer brought;

Shall brooding breed a thought of joy?

Ah hush the sigh, forget the thought!

Silence thine immemorial quest,

contain thy natures vain complaint

None heeds, none cares for thee or thine;

like thee how many came and went?

Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail;

enjoy thy shining hour of sun;

We dance along Deaths icy brink,

but is the dance less full of fun?