CHAPTER VIII.

ON RETURN FROM INDIA.

When Richard came home, he first ran down full of joy to visit all his relations and friends. He then went to Oxford with half a mind to take his degree. He was between twenty-eight and twenty-nine years of age. In 1850 he went back to France, and devoted himself to fencing. To this day "the Burton _une-deux_" and notably the _manchette_ (the upward slash, disabling the swordarm, and saving life in affairs of honour), earned him his _brevet de pointe_ for the excellence of his swordsmanship, and he became a _Maître d'armes_. Indeed, as horseman, swordsman, and marksman, no soldier of his day surpassed him, and very few equalled him. His family, that is his father, mother and sister, with her two children--her husband being in India, and his brother Edward in the 37th Regiment (Queen's)--went to Boulogne, like all the rest of us, for change, quiet, and economy, and there he joined them.

[Sidenote: _Boulogne._]

_We_ did exactly the same, the object being to put me and my sisters into the Sacré Cœur to learn French. Boulogne, in those days, was a very different town to what it is now. It was "the home of the stranger who had done something wrong." The natives were of the usual merchant, or rich _bourgeoisie_ class; there was a sprinkling of local _noblesse_ in the Haute-Ville; the gem of the natives in the lower class were the Poissardes, who hold themselves entirely distinct from the town, are a cross between Spanish and Flemish, and in _those_ days were headed by a handsome "Queen" called Caroline, long since dead. The English colony was very large. The _créme_, who did not mix with the general "smart people," were the Seymours, Dundases, Chichesters, Jerninghams, Bedingfelds, Cliffords, Molyneux-Seels, and ourselves. Maybe I have forgotten many others.

The rest of the colony, instead of living like the colonies that Richard describes at Tours, used to walk a great deal up and down the Grand Rue, which was the fashionable lounge, the Rue de l'Écu, the Quai, and the Pier. The men were handsome and smart, and beautifully dressed, with generally an immense amount of white shirt-front, as in the Park, and the girls were pretty and well dressed. So were the young married women in those days. The Établissement was a sort of Casino, where everybody passed their evening, except the _créme;_ they had music, dancing, cards, old ladies knitting, and refreshments, and it was the hotbed, like a club, of all the gossip and flirtation, with an occasional roaring scandal.

The hardship of _my_ life and that of my sisters, was, that our mother would never let us set foot inside of it, which was naturally the only thing we longed to do, so that we had awfully dull, slow lives. Here Richard brought out his "Goa," his two books on Scinde, and his "Falconry," and prepared a book that came out in 1853, "A Complete System of Bayonet Exercise," of which, I regret to say, the only copy I possessed has been lost with the manuscript at David Bogue's. People were _now_ beginning to say that "Burton was an awfully clever young fellow, a man of great mark, in fact the coming man." Whilst I am speaking of that system of bayonet exercise, I may say that it was, as all he did, undervalued _at the time_, but still it has long been the one used by the Horseguards. Colonel Sykes, who was Richard's friend, sent for him, and sharply rebuked him with printing a book that would do far more harm than good.

[Sidenote: _Bayonet Exercise._]

It was thought that bayonet exercise would make the men unsteady in the ranks. The importance of bayonet exercise was recognized everywhere _except_ in England. Richard detected our weak point in military system, and he knew that it would be the British soldier's forte when properly used. Richard was not "in the ring," but when that was proved, his pamphlet was taken down from the dusty pigeon-hole, and a few modifications--not improvements--were added, so as to enable a just and enlightened War Office, not to send him a word of thanks, a compliment, an expression of official recognition, which was all his soul craved for, but a huge letter from the Treasury, with a seal the size of a baby's fist, with a gracious permission to draw upon the Treasury for the sum of one shilling.

Richard always appreciated humour. He went to the War Office at once, was sent to half a dozen different rooms, and, to the intense astonishment of all the clerks, after three-quarters of an hour's very hard work he drew his shilling, and instead of framing it, he gave it to the first hungry beggar that he saw as soon as he came out of the War Office.

"Lord love yer, sir," said the beggar.

"No, my man, I don't exactly expect Him to do _that_. But I dare say you want a drink?"

He did not lead the life that was led by the general colony at Boulogne. He had a little set of men friends, knew some of the French, had a great many flirtations, one very serious one. He passed his days in literature and fencing: at home he was most domestic; his devotion to his parents, especially to his sick mother, was beautiful.

My sisters and I were kept at French all day, music and other studies, but were frequently turned into the Ramparts, which would give one a mile's walk around, to do our reading; then we had a turn down the Grande Rue, the Rue de l'Écu, the Quai, and the Pier at the fashionable hour, for a treat, or else we were taken a long country walk, or a long row up the river Liane in the summer time, where we occasionally saw a Guingette; but we were religiously marched home at half-past eight to supper and bed, unless one of the _créme_ gave a dull tea-party.

[Sidenote: _Meets me at Boulogne at School._]

One day, when we were on the Ramparts, the vision of my awakening brain came towards us. He was five feet eleven inches in height, very broad, thin, and muscular;[1] he had very dark hair, black, clearly defined, sagacious eyebrows, a brown weather-beaten complexion, straight Arab features, a determined-looking mouth and chin, nearly covered by an enormous black moustache. I have since heard a clever friend say "that he had the brow of a God, the jaw of a Devil." But the most remarkable part of his appearance was, two large black flashing eyes with long lashes, that pierced you through and through. He had a fierce, proud, melancholy expression, and when he smiled, he smiled as though it hurt him, and looked with impatient contempt at things generally. He was dressed in a black, short, shaggy coat, and shouldered a short thick stick as if he was on guard.

He looked at me as though he read me through and through in a moment, and started a little. I was completely magnetized, and when we had got a little distance away I turned to my sister, and whispered to her, "That man will marry _me_." The next day he was there again, and he followed us, and chalked up, "May I speak to you?" leaving the chalk on the wall, so I took up the chalk and wrote back, "No, mother will be angry;" and mother found it,--and _was_ angry; and after that we were stricter prisoners than ever. However, "destiny is stronger than custom." A mother and a pretty daughter came to Boulogne, who happened to be a cousin of my father's; they joined the majority in the Society sense, and one day we were allowed to walk on the Ramparts with them. There I met Richard, who--agony!--was flirting with the daughter; we were formally introduced, and the name made me start. I will say why later.

I did not try to attract his attention; but whenever he came to the usual promenade I would invent any excuse that came, to take another turn to watch him, if he was not looking. If I could catch the sound of his deep voice, it seemed to me so soft and sweet, that I remained spell-bound, as when I hear gypsy-music. I never lost an opportunity of seeing him, when I could not be seen, and as I used to turn red and pale, hot and cold, dizzy and faint, sick and trembling, and my knees used to nearly give way under me, my mother sent for the doctor, to complain that my digestion was out of order, and that I got migraines in the street, and he prescribed me a pill which I put in the fire. All girls will sympathize with me. I was struck with the shaft of Destiny, but I had no hopes (being nothing but an ugly schoolgirl) of taking the wind out of the sails of the dashing creature, with whom he was carrying on a very serious flirtation.

In early days Richard had got into a rather strong flirtation with a very handsome and very fast girl, who had a vulgar, middle-class sort of mother. One day he was rather alarmed at getting a polite but somewhat imperious note from the mother, asking him to call upon her. He obeyed, but he took with him his friend Dr. Steinhaüser, a charming man, who looked as if his face was carved out of wood. After the preliminaries of a rather formal reception, in a very prim-looking drawing-room, the lady began, looking severely at him, "I sent for you, Captain Burton, because I think it my dooty to ask what your intentions are, with regard to my daughter?" Richard put on his most infantile face of perplexity as he said, "Your dooty, madam--" and, then, as if he was trying to recall things, and after a while suddenly seizing the facts of the case, he got up and said, "Alas! madam, strictly dishonourable," and shaking his head as if he was going to burst into tears at his own iniquities, "I regret to say, strictly dishonourable;" and bowed himself out with Dr. Steinhaüser, who never moved a muscle of his face. Richard had never done the young lady a scrap of harm, beyond talking to her a little more than the others, because she was so "awfully jolly," but the next time he met her he said, "Look here, young woman, if I talk to you, you must arrange that I do not have 'mamma's dooty' flung at my head any more." "The old fool!" said the girl, "how like her!"

The only luxury I indulged in was a short but heartfelt prayer for him every morning. I read all his books, and was seriously struck as before by the name when I came to the Játs in Scinde--but this I will explain later on. My cousin asked him to write something for me, which I used to wear next to my heart. One night an exception was made to our dull rule of life. My cousins gave a tea-party and dance, and "the great majority" flocked in, and there was Richard like a star amongst rushlights. That was a Night of nights; he waltzed with me once, and spoke to me several times, and I kept my sash where he put his arm round my waist to waltz, and my gloves. I never wore them again. I did not know it then, but the "little cherub who sits up aloft" is not _only_ occupied in taking care of poor Jack, for I came in also for a share of it.

MECCA.

[Sidenote: _His Famous Journey to Mecca and El Medinah._]

Whilst leading this sort of life, on a long furlough, Richard determined to carry out a project he had long had in his head, to study thoroughly the "inner life of the Moslem." He had long felt within himself the qualifications, both mental and physical, which are needed for the exploration of dangerous regions, impossible of access, and of disguises difficult to sustain. His career as a dervish in Scinde greatly helped him. His mind was both practical and imaginative; he set himself to imagine and note down every contingency that _might_ arise, and one by one he studied each separate thing until he was master of it. As a small sample he apprenticed himself to a blacksmith; he learned to make horseshoes and shoe his horse.

To accomplish a journey to Mecca and Medinah quite safely in those days (1853) was almost an impossibility, for the discovery that he was _not_ a Mussulman would have been avenged by a hundred Khanjars. It meant living with his life in his hand, and amongst the strangest and wildest companions, adopting their unfamiliar manners, and living for perhaps nine months in the hottest and most unhealthy climate, upon repulsive food, complete and absolute isolation from all that makes life tolerable, from all civilization, from all his natural habits--the brain at high tension, never to depart from the _rôle_ he had adopted.

He obtained a year's leave on purpose, and left London as a Persian, for, during the time, he had to assume and sustain _several_ Oriental characters. Captain Grindlay, who was in the secret, travelled to Southampton and Alexandria as his English interpreter. John Thurburn, who, curiously to say, was also the host of Burckhardt till he died, and was buried in Cairo, received Richard at Alexandria. He and his son-in-law, John Larking, of the Firs, Lee, Kent, were the only persons throughout the perilous expedition who knew of his secret. He went to Cairo as a dervish, and he lived there as a native, till (as he told me) he actually believed himself to be what he represented himself to be, and then he felt he was safe, and he practised on his own country-people the finding out that he was unrecognizable. He had wished to cross the whole length of Arabia, but the Russian War had caused disturbances, which might have delayed him over his year's leave.

In those days it was almost impossible to visit the Holy City as one of the Faithful. First, there was the pilgrim-ship to embark on; then there were long desert caravan marches, with their privations and their dangers; then there was the holy shrine, the Ka'abah, to be visited, and all the ceremonies to be gone through, like a Roman Catholic Holy Week at Rome. Burckhardt, the Swiss traveller, did get in, but he never could see the Ka'abah, and he confessed afterwards that he was so nervous that he was unable to take notes, and unable to write or sketch for fear of being detected, whereas Richard was sketching and writing in his white _burnous_ the whole time he was prostrating and kissing the holy Stone. He did not go in mockery, but reverentially. He had brought his brain to believe himself one of them. Europeans, converted Moslems, have of late gone there, but they have been received with the utmost civility, consistent with coldness, have been admitted to outward friendship, but have been carefully kept out of what they most wished to know and see, so that Richard was thus the only European who had beheld the inner and religious life of the Moslems as one of themselves.

Amongst the various Oriental characters that Richard assumed, the one that suited best was half-Arab, half-Iranian, such as throng the northern shores of the Persian Gulf. With long hair falling on his shoulders, long beard, face and hands, arms and legs browned and stained with a thin coat of henna, Oriental dress, spear in hand, and pistols in belt, Richard became Mirza Abdullah, el Bushiri. Here he commenced his most adventurous and romantic life, explored from North to South, from East to West, mixed with all sorts of people and tribes without betraying himself in manners, customs, or speech, when death must often have ensued, had he created either dislike or suspicion.

I here give a slight sketch from his private notes, and for fuller details refer the reader to his "Pilgrimage to Mecca and El Medinah," 3 vols., with coloured illustrations, published in 1855, and which made a great sensation. Although he has been the author of some eighty books and pamphlets, I think that this original edition of three volumes is the one that his name should live by, and it will be the first of the Uniform Library with the Meccan Press. The Uniform Library means a reproduction of all his hitherto published works, and eventually his unpublished ones, so that the world may lose nothing of what he has ever written.

As I have said, on the night of the 3rd of April, 1853, a Persian Mirza, accompanied by an English interpreter, Captain Henry Grindlay, of the Bengal Cavalry, left London for Southampton, and embarked on the P. and O. steamer _Bengal_. The voyage was profitable but tedious; Richard passed it in resuming his Oriental character, with such success, that when he landed at Alexandria, he was recognized and blessed as a true Moslem by the native population.

John Thurburn and his son-in-law, John Larking, received him at their villa on the Mahmudíyah Canal, but he was lodged in an outhouse, the better to deceive the servants. Here he practised the Korán and prayer, and all the ceremonies of the Faith, with a neighbouring Shaykh. He also became a _hakím_, or doctor, and called himself Shaykh Abdullah, preparing to be a dervish. The dervish is a chartered vagabond; nobody asks why he comes, where he goes; he may go on foot, or on horseback, or alone, or with a large retinue, and he is as much respected without arms, as though he were armed to the teeth. "I only wanted," he said, "a little knowledge of medicine, which I _had_, moderate skill in magic, a studious reputation, and enough to keep me from starving." He provided himself with a few necessaries for the journey.

When he had to leave Alexandria he wrote--

"Not without a feeling of regret, I left my little room among the white myrtle blossoms and the rosy oleander flowers with the almond scent. I kissed with humble ostentation my good host's hand, in the presence of his servants. I bade adieu to my patients, who now amounted to about fifty, shaking hands with all meekly, and with religious equality of attention; and mounted in a 'trap' which looked like a cross between a wheelbarrow and a dog-cart, drawn by a kicking, jibbing, and biting mule, I set out for the steamer, the _Little Asthmatic_.

[Sidenote: _His Start from Alexandria to Cairo._]

"The journey from Alexandria to Cairo lasted three days and nights. We saw nothing but muddy water, dusty banks, sand, mist, milky sky, glaring sun, breezes like the blasts of a furnace, and the only variation was that the steamer grounded four or five times a day, and I passed my time telling my beads with a huge rosary. I was a deck passenger. The sun burnt us all day, and the night dews were raw and thick. Our diet was bread and garlic, moistened with muddy water from the canal. At Cairo I went to a caravanserai. Here I became a Pathán. I was born in India of Afghan parents, who had settled there, and I was educated at Rangoon, and sent out, as is often the custom, to wander. I knew all the languages that I required to pass me, Persian, Hindostani, and Arabic. It is customary at the shop, on the camel, in the Mosque, to ask, 'What is thy name? Whence comest thou?' and you must be prepared. I had to do the fast of the Ramazan, which is far stricter than the Catholics' Lent, and in Cairo I studied the Moslem faith in every detail. I had great difficulty in getting a passport without betraying myself, but the chief of the Afghan college at the Azhar Mosque contrived it for me. I hired a couple of camels, and put my Meccan boy and baggage on one, and I took the other. I had an eighty-four mile ride in midsummer, on a bad wooden saddle, on a bad dromedary, across the Suez Desert.

"Above, through a sky terrible in its stainless beauty, and the splendours of a pitiless blinding glare, the simoom caresses you like a lion with flaming breath. Around lie drifted sand-heaps, upon which each puff of wind leaves its trace in solid waves, frayed rocks, the very skeletons of mountains, and hard unbroken plains, over which he who rides is spurred by the idea that the bursting of a waterskin, or the pricking of a camel's hoof, would be a certain death of torture; a haggard land infested with wild beasts and wilder men; a region whose very fountains murmur the warning words, 'Drink and away!'

"In the desert, even more than upon the ocean, there is present Death, and this sense of danger, never absent, invests the scene of travel with a peculiar interest.

"Let the traveller who suspects exaggeration leave the Suez road, and gallop northwards over the sands for an hour or two; in the drear silence, the solitude, and the fantastic desolation of the place, he will feel what the desert _may_ be. And then the oases, and little lines of fertility--how soft and how beautiful!--even though the Wady-el-Ward ('the Vale of Flowers') be the name of some stern flat in which a handful of wild shrubs blossom, while struggling through a cold season's ephemeral existence.

"In such circumstances the mind is influenced through the body. Though your mouth glows, and your skin is parched, yet you feel no languor,--the effect of humid heat; your lungs are lightened, your sight brightens, your memory recovers its tone, and your spirits become exuberant. Your fancy and imagination are powerfully aroused, and the wildness and sublimity of the scenes around you, stir up all the energies of your soul, whether for exertion, danger, or strife. Your _morale_ improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded; the hypocritical politeness and the slavery of Civilization are left behind you in the City. Your senses are quickened; they require no stimulants but air and exercise; in the desert spirituous liquors excite only disgust.

"There is a keen enjoyment in mere animal existence. The sharp appetite disposes of the most indigestible food; the sand is softer than a bed of down, and the purity of the air suddenly puts to flight a dire cohort of diseases.

"Here Nature returns to Man, however unworthily he has treated her, and, believe me, when once your tastes have conformed to the tranquillity of such travel, you will suffer real pain in returning to the turmoil of civilization. You will anticipate the bustle and the confusion of artificial life, its luxuries and its false pleasures, with repugnance. Depressed in spirits, you will for a time after your return feel incapable of mental or bodily exertion. The air of Cities will suffocate you, and the careworn and cadaverous countenances of citizens will haunt you like a vision of judgment.

"I was nearly undone by Mohammed, my Meccan boy, finding my sextant amongst my clothes, and it was only by Umar Effendi having read a letter of mine to Haji Wali that very morning on Theology, that he was able to certify that I was thoroughly orthodox.

"When I started my intention had been to cross the all but unknown Arabian Peninsula, and to map it out, either from El Medinah to Maskat, or from Mecca to Makallah on the Indian Ocean. I wanted to open a market for horses between Arabia and Central India, to go through the Rubá-el-Khali ('the Empty Abode'), the great wilderness on our maps, to learn the hydrography of the Hejaz, and the ethnographical details of this race of Arabs. I should have been very much at sea without my sextant. I managed to secrete a pocket compass.

"The journey would have been of fifteen or sixteen hundred miles, and have occupied at least ten months longer than my leave. The quarrelling of the tribes prevented my carrying it out. I had arranged with the Beni Harb, the Bedawin tribe, to join them after the Pilgrimage like a true Bedawin, but it _meant_ all this above-mentioned work; I found it useless to be killed in a petty tribe-quarrel, perhaps, about a mare, and once I joined them it would have been a point of honour to aid in all their quarrels and raids.

[Sidenote: _Twelve Days in an Open Sambúk._]

"At Suez we embarked on a _Sambúk_, an open boat of about fifty tons. She had no means of reefing, no compass, no log, no sounding-line, no chart. Ninety-seven pilgrims (fifteen women and children) came on deck. They were all barefoot, bare-headed, dirty, ferocious, and armed. The distance was doubled by detours; it would have been six hundred miles in a straight line. Even the hardened Arabs and Africans suffered most severely. After twelve days of purgatory, I sprang ashore at Yambú; and travelling a fortnight in this pilgrim-boat gave me the fullest possible knowledge of the inner life of El Islam. However, the heat of the sun, the heavy night dews, and the constant washing of the waves over me, had so affected one of my feet that I could hardly put it to the ground.

"Yambú is the port of El Medinah, as Jeddah is that of Mecca. The people are a good type, healthy, proud, and manly, and they have considerable trade. Here I arranged for camels, and our Caravan hired an escort of irregular cavalry--very necessary, for, as the tribes were out, we had to fight every day. They did not want to start till the tribes had finished fighting; but I was resolved, and we went. Here I brought a _shugduf_, or litter, and seven days' provisions for the journey, and here also I became an Arab, to avoid paying the capitation tax, the _Jizyát_.

"We eventually arrived at El Hamra, the 'Red Village,' but in a short while the Caravan arrived from Mecca, and in about four hours we joined it and went on our way. That evening we were attacked by Bedawi, and we had fighting pretty nearly the whole way. We lost twelve men, camels, and other beasts of burden; the Bedawi looted the baggage and ate the camels.

"One morning El Medinah was in sight. We were jaded and hungry; and we gloried in the gardens and orchards about the town. I was met at El Medinah by Shaykh Hamid, who received me into his family as one of the faithful, and where I led a quiet, peaceful, and pleasant life, during leisure hours; but of course, the pilgrimage being my object, I had a host of shrines to visit, ceremonies to perform, and prayers to recite, besides the usual prayers five times a day; for it must be remembered that El Medinah contains the tomb of Mahommad." (For description see Burton's 'Mecca and El Medinah,' 3 vols.)

"The Damascus Caravan was to start on the 27th Zu'l Ka'adah (1st September). I had intended to stay at El Medinah till the last moment, and to accompany the _Kafilat el Tayyárah_, or the 'Flying Caravan,' which usually leaves on the 2nd Zu'l Hijjah, two days after that of Damascus.

"Suddenly arose the rumour that there would be no _Tayyárah_,[2] and that all pilgrims must proceed with the Damascus Caravan or await the _Rakb_.[3] The Sheríf Zayd, Sa'ad, the robbers' only friend, paid Sa'ad an unsuccessful visit. Sa'ad demanded back his shaykhship, in return for a safe conduct through his country; 'otherwise,' said he, 'I will cut the throat of every hen that ventures into the passes.'

"The Sheríf Zayd returned to El Medinah on the 25th Zu'l Ka'adah. (30th August). Early on the morning of the next day, Shaykh Hamid returned hurriedly from the bazar, exclaiming, 'You must make ready at once, Effendi! There will be no _Tayyárah_. All Hajis start to-morrow. Allah will make it easy to you! Have you your water-skins in order? You are to travel down the Darb el Sharki, _where you will not see water for three days!_'

"Poor Hamid looked horror-struck as he concluded this fearful announcement, which filled me with joy. Burckhardt had visited and described the Darb el Sultani, the 'High' or 'Royal Road' along the coast; but _no_ European had as yet travelled down by Harún el Rashíd's and the Lady Zubaydah's celebrated route through the Nejd Desert. And here was my chance!

"Whenever he was ineffably disgusted, I consoled him with singing the celebrated song of Maysúnah, the beautiful Bedawin wife of the Caliph Muawíyah." (Richard was immensely fond of this little song, and the Bedawin screams with joy when he hears it.)

"'Oh, take these purple robes away, Give back my cloak of camel's hair, And bear me from this tow'ring pile To where the black tents flap i' the air. The camel's colt with falt'ring tread, The dog that bays at all but me, Delight me more than ambling mules, Than every art of minstrelsy; And any cousin, poor but free, Might take me, fatted ass, from thee.'[4]

"The old man was delighted, clapped my shoulder, and exclaimed, 'Verily, O Father of Moustachios, I will show thee the black Tents of my Tribe this year.'

[Sidenote: _Ten Days' Ride to Mecca._]

"So, after staying at Medinah about six weeks, I set out with the Damascus Caravan down the Darb el Sharki, under the care of a very venerable Bedawin, who nicknamed me 'Abú Shuwárib,' meaning, 'Father of Moustachios,' mine being very large. I found myself standing opposite the Egyptian gate of El Medinah, surrounded by my friends--those friends of a day, who cross the phantasmagoria of one's life. There were affectionate embraces and parting mementoes. The camels were mounted; I and the boy Mohammed in the litter or _shugduf_, and Shaykh Nur in his cot. The train of camels with the Caravan wended its way slowly in a direction from north to north-east, gradually changing to eastward. After an hour's travel, the Caravan halted to turn and take farewell of the Holy City.

"We dismounted to gaze at the venerable minarets and the green dome which covers the tomb of the Prophet. The heat was dreadful, the climate dangerous, and the beasts died in numbers. Fresh carcases strewed our way, and were covered with foul vultures. The Caravan was most picturesque. We travelled principally at night, but the camels had to perform the work of goats, and step from block to block of basalt like mountaineers, which being unnatural to them, they kept up a continual piteous moan. The simoom and pillars of sand continually threw them over.

"Water is the great trouble of a Caravan journey, and the only remedy is to be patient and not to talk. The first two hours gives you the mastery, but if you drink you cannot stop. Forty-seven miles before we reached Mecca, at El Zaríbah, we had to perform the ceremony of _El Ihram_, meaning 'to assume the pilgrim garb.' A barber shaved us, trimmed our moustachios; we bathed and perfumed, and then we put on two new cotton cloths, each six feet long by three and a half broad. It is white, with narrow red stripes and fringe, and worn something as you wear it in the baths. Our heads and feet, right shoulder and arm, are exposed.

"We had another fight before we got to Mecca, and a splendid camel in front of me was shot through the heart. Our Sheríf Zayd was an Arab Chieftain of the purest blood, and very brave. He took two or three hundred men, and charged them. However, they shot many of our dromedaries, and camels, and boxes and baggage strewed the place; and when we were gone the Bedawi would come back, loot the baggage, and eat the camels. On Saturday, the 10th of September, at one in the morning, there was great excitement in the Caravan, and loud cries of 'Mecca! Mecca! Oh, the Sanctuary, the Sanctuary!' All burst into loud praises, and many wept. We reached it next morning, after ten days and nights from El Medinah. I became the guest of the boy Mohammed, in the house of his mother.

[Sidenote: _Moslem Holy Week._]

"First I did the circumambulation at the Haram. Early next morning I was admitted to the house of our Lord; and we went to the holy well Zemzem, the holy water of Mecca,[5] and then the Ka'abah, in which is inserted the famous black stone, where they say a prayer for the Unity of Allah. Then I performed the seven circuits round the Ka'abah, called the _Tawaf_. I then managed to have a way pushed for me through the immense crowd to kiss it. While kissing it, and rubbing hands and forehead upon it, I narrowly observed it, and came away persuaded that it is an aerolite. It is curious that almost all agree upon one point, namely, that the stone is volcanic. Ali Bey calls it mineralogically a 'block of volcanic basalt, whose circumference is sprinkled with little crystals, pointed and straw-like, with rhombs of tile-red felspath upon a dark ground like velvet or charcoal, except one of its protuberances, which is reddish.' It is also described as 'a lava containing several small extraneous particles of a whitish and of a yellowish substance.'

"All this time the pilgrims had scorched feet and burning heads, as they were always uncovered. I was much impressed with the strength and steadfastness of the Mohammedan religion. It was so touching to see them; one of them was clinging to the curtain, and sobbing as though his heart would break.[6] At night I and Shaykh Nur and the boy Mohammed issued forth with the lantern and praying-carpet.

"The moon, now approaching the full, tipped the brow of Abú Kubáya, and lit up the spectacle with a more solemn light. In the midst stood the huge bier-like erection--

'Black as the wings Which some spirit of ill o'er a sepulchre flings!'

except where the moonbeams streaked it like jets of silver falling upon the darkest marble. It formed the point of rest for the eye; the little pagoda-like buildings and domes around it, with all their gilding and framework, faded to the sight. One object, unique in appearance, stood in view--the temple of the one Allah, the God of Abraham, of Ishmael, and of their posterity. Sublime it was, and expressing by all the eloquence of fancy the grandeur of the one idea which vitalized El Islam, and the strength and steadfastness of its votaries.

"One thing I remarked, and think worthy of notice, is that ever since Noah's dove, every religion seems to consider the pigeon a sacred bird; for example, every Mosque swarms with pigeons; St. Mark's, at Venice, and the same exists in most Italian market-places; the Hindoo pandits and the old Assyrian Empire also have them; whilst Catholics make it the emblem of the Holy Ghost.

"The day before I went to Arafat, I spent the night in the Mosque, where I saw many strange sights. One was a negro possessed by the devil. There, too, he prayed by the grave of Ishmael. After this we set out for Arafat, where is the tomb of Adam. (I have seen two since--one at Jerusalem, and one in the mountains behind Damascus.)

"It was a very weary journey, and, with the sun raining fire on our heads and feet, we suffered tortures. The camels threw themselves on the ground, and I myself saw five men fall out and die. On the Mount there were numerous consecrated shrines to see, and we had to listen to an immensely long sermon. On the great festival day we stoned the Devil, each man with seven stones washed in seven waters, and we said, while throwing each stone, 'In the name of Allah--and Allah is Almighty--I do this in hatred of the Devil, and to his shame.' There is then an immense slaughter of victims (five or six thousand), which slaughter, with the intense heat, swarms of flies, and the whole space reeking with blood, produces the most noisome vapours, and probably is the birthplace of that cholera and small-pox which generally devastate the World after the Haj. _Now_ we were allowed to doff the pilgrim's garb.

"We all went to barbers' booths, where we were shaved, had our beards trimmed and our nails cut, saying prayers the while; and, though we had no clothes, we might put our clothes over our heads, and wear our slippers, which were a little protection from the heat. We might then twirl our moustachios, stroke our beards, and return to Mecca. At the last moment I was sent for. I thought, 'Now something is going to happen to me; now I am suspected.'

[Sidenote: _The All-important Crisis._]

"A crowd had gathered round the Ka'abah, and I had no wish to stand bare-headed and bare-footed in the midday September sun. At the cry of 'Open a path for the Haji who would enter the House!' the gazers made way. Two stout Meccans, who stood below the door, raised me in their arms, whilst a third drew me from above into the building. At the entrance I was accosted by several officials, dark-looking Meccans, of whom the blackest and plainest was a youth of the Benu Shaybah family, the true blood of the El Hejaz. He held in his hand the huge silver-gilt padlock of the Ka'abah, and presently, taking his seat upon a kind of wooden press in the left corner of the hall, he officially inquired my name, nation, and other particulars. The replies were satisfactory, and the boy Mohammed was authoritatively ordered to conduct me round the building, and to recite the prayers. I will not deny that, looking at the windowless walls, the officials at the door, and a crowd of excited fanatics below--

'And the place death, considering who I was,'

my feelings were of the trapped-rat description, acknowledged by the immortal nephew of his uncle Perez. A blunder, a hasty action, a misjudged word, a prayer or bow, not strictly the right shibboleth, and my bones would have whitened the desert sand. This did not, however, prevent my carefully observing the scene during our long prayer, and making a rough plan with a pencil upon my white _ihram_.

"I returned home after this _quite_ exhausted, performed an elaborate toilet, washing with henna and warm water, to mitigate the pain the sun had caused on my arms, shoulders, and breast, head and feet, and put on my gayest clothes in honour of the festival. When the moon rose, there was a second stoning, or lapidation, to be performed, and then we strolled round the coffee-houses. There was also a little pilgrimage to undertake, which is in honour of Hagar seeking water for her son Ishmael.

"I now began to long to leave Mecca; I had done everything, seen everything; the heat was simply unendurable, and the little room where I could enjoy privacy for about six hours a day, and jot my notes down, was a perfect little oven.[7]

"I slowly wended my way with a Caravan to Jeddah, with donkeys and Mohammed; I must say that the sight of the sea and the British flag was a pleasant tonic. I went to the British Consulate, but the Dragomans were not very civil to the unfortunate Afghan.

[Sidenote: _His Safe Return._]

"So I was left kicking my heels at the Great Man's Gate for a long time, and heard somebody say, 'Let the dirty nigger wait.' Long inured to patience, however, I did wait, and when the Consul consented to see me, I presented him with a bit of paper, as if it were a money order. On it was written, 'Don't recognize me; I am Dick Burton, but I am not safe yet. Give me some money' (naming the sum), 'which will be returned from London, and don't take any notice of me.' He, however, frequently afterwards, when it was dark, sent for me, and, once safe in his private rooms, showed me abundance of hospitality. Necessity compelled me living with Shayk Nur in a room (to myself), swept, sprinkled with water, and spread with mats.

[Sidenote: _On Board an English Ship._]

"When I went out in gay attire, I was generally mistaken for the Pasha of El Medinah. After about ten days' suspense, an English ship was sent by the Bombay Steam Navigation Company to convey pilgrims from El Hejaz to India, so one day the Afghan disappeared--was supposed to have departed with other dirty pilgrims, but in reality, had got on board the _Dwárká_,[8] an English ship, with a first-class passage; he had emerged from his cabin, after washing all his colouring off, in the garb of an English gentleman; experienced the greatest kindness from the Commander and Officers, which he much needed, being worn out with fatigue and the fatal fiery heat, and felt the great relief to his mind and body from being able to take his first complete rest in safety on board an English ship; but was so changed that the Turkish pilgrims, who crowded the deck, never recognized their late companion pilgrim."

He ends his personal narrative of his sojourn in El Hejaz thus:--

"I have been exposed to perils, and I have escaped from them; I have traversed the sea, and have not succumbed under the severest fatigues; but they with fatal fiery heat have worn me out, and my heart is moved with emotions of gratitude that I have been permitted to effect the objects I had in view."

An Irish missionary wrote of my husband after he was dead:--

"At Damascus Burton began a new chapter, but he was not permitted to start with a clean page. Two incidents in his previous record foreshadowed him, and hampered him in his efforts to make the best of his new Consulate. He had offended the religious susceptibilities of both Mohammedans and Christians, and he found himself confronted with bitter, unreasoning prejudice.

"It is a question of how far Burton's Oriental disguise concealed the Englishman in his pilgrimage to Mecca. I never conversed with a Mohammedan who had accompanied Burton on that journey, but I have seen Arabs who saw Palgrave on his way to Nejd, and his attempts to pose as a native were a constant source of amusement to all with whom he came in contact. Burton's Oriental cast of face helped him when putting on the outward appearance of a Bedawin, but at no period of his life could he have passed for an Arab one second after he began to speak.[9] On the pilgrimage to Mecca, Burton would be known as a devout British Mohammedan, just as easily as we recognize an Arab convert on a missionary platform, notwithstanding the efforts of the schoolmaster and the tailor to transform him into an Englishman. And as a perverted Englishman, Burton would be as welcome in the Hajj as a converted Arab would be in Exeter Hall."

This is a ridiculous paragraph, and spoils an otherwise splendid article. The writer speaks fairly good Syrian Christian Arabic with an Irish accent, but he is not conversant with the Arabic of scholars and high-class Mohammedans, and he does not know a word of Persian, Hindostani, Afghani, Turkish, or any of the other ten Oriental languages, in which my husband passed his pilgrimages. I think native testimony is best. I can remember, at a reception at Lady Salisbury's, the Persian Ambassador and his suite following Richard about the whole evening, and when I joked them about it, they said, "It is such an extraordinary thing to us, to see any foreigner, especially an Englishman, speaking our language like ourselves. He might have never been out of Teheran; he even knows all the slang of the market-place as well as we do." When he arrived in Damascus, his record was perfectly clean with the Mohammedans, and the only bitter, unreasoning prejudice was in the breast of Christian missionaries, and Christian Foreign Office employés, whose friends wanted the post. Burton and Palgrave were quite two different men, as silver and nickel. I know exactly the _sort_ of Arabic Palgrave spoke.

In the days that Richard went to Mecca, _no_ converted Englishman would have been received as _now_. As to his Arabic, Abd el Kadir told me--and, mind, he was _the_ highest cultivated and the most religious Moslem in Damascus; the only Sufi, I believe--that there were only two men in Damascus whose Arabic was worth listening to; one was my husband, and the other was Shaykh Mijwal El Mezrab, Lady Ellenborough's Bedawin husband. We may remember that at Jeddah his life was saved by being mistaken for the Pasha of El Medinah, and when he went to the departure of the Haj at Damascus, as he rode down the lines in frock-coat and fez, he was accosted by more than one as the Pasha of the Haj; and when the mistake was explained, and he told them who he was, they only laughed and said, "Why don't you come along with us again to Mecca, as you did before?" He was looked upon by _all_ as a friend to the Moslem. He _never_ profaned the sanctuaries of Mecca and Medina, and so far from being unpopular with the Moslems, he received almost yearly an invitation to go back with the Haj, and no opposition would have been made to him had he made another pilgrimage to the jealously guarded Haramayn or the holy Cities of the Moslems. Even _I_ am always admitted to the Mosques with the women for _his_ sake.

There was no tinsel and gingerbread about anything Richard did; it was always true and real.

[Sidenote: _Interesting Letters._]

In further support of the above I quote two letters, one from _Sporting Truth_.

"I had the pleasure of a slight acquaintance with the late Sir Richard Burton, familiarly known among his friends as 'Ruffian Dick.' Not that there was anything offensive meant by that epithet. Indeed, in his case, it had a playfully complimentary significance. There were, in the old days, as many readers of _Sporting Truth_ will recollect, two familiar pugilists who went by the nicknames respectively of the 'Old' and 'Young Ruffian.' The term referred purely to their style of fighting, and was not intended to convey the idea that they were any less decent or civilized members of society than their neighbours. For much the same reason was Sir Richard Burton dubbed 'Ruffian Dick' by his pals. He was, without doubt, a terrible fighter, and fought in single combat more enemies than perhaps any man of his time. A man of peculiar temper, too, and strong individuality, with a wholesome contempt for Mrs. Grundy and all her ways. But his great distinguishing feature was his courage. No braver man than 'Ruffian Dick' ever lived. His daring was of that romantic order which revels in danger for danger's sake. No crisis, however appalling, could shake his splendid nerve. He was as cool when his life hung on a hair's breadth, as when he sat smoking in his own snuggery.

"I know of nothing in the annals of adventure to surpass his memorable journey to Mecca with the Mohammedan pilgrims. None but a follower of the true Prophet had ever penetrated the shrine where the coffin of Mohammed swings between earth and heaven. No eyes but those of the faithful were permitted to gaze upon that holy of holies. Certain and speedy death awaited any infidel who should profane with his footsteps those sacred precincts, or seek to pry into those hidden mysteries. There were secret passwords among the pilgrims, by which they could detect at once any one who was not of the true faith; and detection meant instant death at the hands of the enraged fanatics. Yet all these difficulties and dangers--apparently insurmountable--did not deter Ruffian Dick from undertaking the perilous enterprise. He went through a long course of preparation, studied all the minute ways of the Arabs--he already spoke their language like a native--professed the Mohammedan religion, acquired the secret passwords, and then boldly joined the great annual procession of pilgrims to the shrine of the Prophet.

"How perfect his disguise was, the following anecdote will show. On his return from the pilgrimage to Mecca, his leave had expired, and he had to return to India at once without time to rig himself out with a fresh outfit. One evening a party of officers were lounging outside Shepherd's Hotel, at Cairo. As they sat talking and smoking, there passed repeatedly in front of them an Arab in his loose flowing robes, with head proudly erect, and the peculiar swinging stride of those sons of the desert. As he strode backwards and forwards he drew nearer and nearer to the little knot of officers, till at last, as he swept by, the flying folds of his burnous brushed against one of the officers. 'Damn that nigger's impudence!' said the officer; 'if he does that again I'll kick him.' To his surprise the dignified Arab suddenly halted, wheeled round, and exclaimed, 'Well, damn it, Hawkins, that's a nice way to welcome a fellow after two years' absence.' 'By G--d, it's Ruffian Dick,' cried Hawkins. And Ruffian Dick it was, but utterly transformed out of all resemblance to a European. His complexion was burned by the sun to a deep umber tint, and his cast of features was more Oriental than English, so that in the robes of an Arab he might well pass for one of that nomad race."

Here is the second, from _Allen's Indian Mail_.

"THE LATE SIR RICHARD BURTON.

"To the Editor of the _Times_ of India.

"SIR,

"Unlike your correspondent, Mr. Levick (of Suez), questioning Sir Richard's visit to Medinah in 1853, I merely want to say that in Sir Richard the scientific world has lost a bright star. In linguistic attainments there was not his equal in the world. He could not only speak the languages, but act so well that his most intimate friends were often deceived. I was often witness to this feat of his while at Kurrachee in 1847, as I happened to be employed under Dr. Stocks, botanist, in Sind, as his botanical draughtsman. Sir Richard (then a lieutenant) and the doctor occupied the same bungalow. I had necessarily to work in the hall, and consequently had the opportunity of seeing and admiring his ways. He was on special duty, which in his case meant to perfect himself for some political duty, by mastering the languages of the country. When I knew him he was master of half a dozen languages, which he wrote and spoke so fluently that a stranger who did not see him and heard him speaking would fancy he heard a native. His domestic servants were--a Portuguese, with whom he spoke Portuguese and Goanese, an African, a Persian, and a Sindi or Belochee. These spoke their mother tongue to Sir Richard as he was engaged in his studies with _moonshees_, who relieved each other every two hours, from ten to four daily. The _moonshees_ would read an hour and converse the next, and it was a treat to hear Sir Richard talk; one would scarcely be able to distinguish the Englishman from a Persian, Arabian, or a Scindian.

"His habits at home were perfectly Persian or Arabic. His hair was dressed _à la Persian_--long and shaved from the forehead to the top of the head; his eyes, by some means or other he employed, resembled Persian or Arabian; he used the Turkish bath and wore a cowl; and when he went out for a ride he used a wig and goggles. His complexion was also thorough Persian, so that Nature evidently intended him for the work he afterwards so successfully performed, namely, visiting the shrine of the Prophet Mohammed--a work very few would have undertaken unless he was a complete master of himself.

"I was a witness to his first essay in disguising himself as a poor Persian, and taking in his friend Moonshee Ali Akbar (the father of Mirza Hossein, solicitor of this City). The _moonshee_ was seated one evening in an open space in front of his bungalow in the town of Kurrachee, with a lot of his friends enjoying the evening breeze, and chatting away as Persians are wont to do. Sir Richard, disguised as a Persian traveller, approached them, and after the usual compliments, inquired for the rest-house, and, as a matter of course, gave a long rigmarole account of his travels and of people the _moonshee_ knew, and thus excited his curiosity and got him into conversation; and when he thought he acted his part to perfection, bid him the time and left him, but did not go far when he called out to the _moonshee_ in English if he did not know him. The _moonshee_ was completely taken aback; he did not know where the voice (his friend Burton's) came from, till he was addressed again, and a recognition took place, to the great astonishment of the _moonshee_ and his friends. Such a jovial companion Sir Richard was, that his bungalow was the resort of the learned men of the place, amongst whom I noticed Major (afterwards General) Walter Scott, Lieutenant (and now General) Alfred De Lisle, Lieutenant Edward Dansey of Mooltan notoriety, Dr. Stocks, and many others, but who, with the exception of General De Lisle, are all gone to their home above, where Sir Richard has now followed. May their souls rest in peace!

"Some time or other Lady Burton may write a memoir of Sir Richard's life, and a slight incident as the one I have related may be of use to her, and if you think as I do, and consider it worth inserting in a corner of your paper, I shall be very much obliged to you if you will do so.

"Yours, etc.,

"WALTER ABRAHAM.

"October 31, 1891."

On the return journey from Mecca, when Richard could secure any privacy, he composed the most exquisite gem of Oriental poetry, that I have ever heard or imagined, nor do I believe it has its equal, either from the pen of Hafiz, Saadi, Shakespeare, Milton, Swinburne, or any other. It is quite unique; it is called the Kasîdah, or the "Lay of the Higher Law," by Haji Abdu el-Yezdi. It will ride over the heads of most, it will displease many, but it will appeal to all large hearts and large brains for its depth, height, breadth, for its heart, nobility, its pathos, its melancholy, its despair. It is the very perfection of romance, it seems the cry of a Soul wandering through space, looking for what it does not find. I have read it many times during my married life, and never without bitter tears, and when I read it now, it affects me still more; he used to take it away from me, it impressed me so. I give you the poem here in full.

It reminds me more than any other thing of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyâm, the astronomer-poet of Khorasán, known as the tent-maker, written in the eleventh century, which poem was made known by Mr. Edward Fitzgerald in about 1861, to Richard Burton, to Swinburne, and Dante Rossetti. Richard at once claimed him as a brother Sufi, and said that all his allusions are purely typical, and particularly in the second verse--

II. "Before the phantom of False morning died, Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried, 'When all the temple is prepared within, Why nods the drowsy Worshipper outside?'"

Yet the "Kasîdah" was written in 1853--the Rubáiyát he did not know till eight years later.

[Sidenote: _The Kasîdah._]

I shall reproduce the "Kasîdah" in its entirety, with its fifteen pages of copious annotations, in the Uniform Library of Sir Richard's works which I am editing. I give the annotations in the Appendix.

It is a poem of extraordinary power on the nature and destiny of Man, anti-Christian and Pantheistic. So much wealth of Oriental learning has rarely been compressed into so small a compass.

"Let his page Which charms the chosen spirits of the age, Fold itself for a serener clime Of years to come, and find its recompense In that just expectation." ----SHELLEY.

"Let them laugh at me for speaking of things which they do not understand; and I must pity them while they laugh at me."----ST. AUGUSTINE.

* * * * *

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.

For other details concerning the Poem and the Poet, the curious reader is referred to the end of the volume (_i.e._ the Appendix).

THE KASÎDAH (COUPLETS) OF HAJI ABDU EL-YEZDI.

A LAY OF THE HIGHER LAW.

The hour is nigh; the waning Queen walks forth to rule the later night; Crown'd with the sparkle of a Star, and throned on orb of ashen light:

The Wolf-tail[10] sweeps the paling East to leave a deeper gloom behind, And Dawn uprears her shining head, sighing with semblance of a wind:

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:

O'er fiery waste and frozen wold, o'er horrid hill and gloomy glen, The home of grisly beast and Ghoul,[11] the haunts of wilder, grislier men;--

With the brief gladness of the Palms, that tower and sway o'er 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 Allah's Holy Hill.[12]

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? Man's 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 life's 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 Birthday's injury!

Friends of my youth, a last adieu! haply some day we meet again; Yet ne'er 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 Camel's 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 sadden'd 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 Safety's shore so lightly tread?" Thus quoth the Bard of Love and Wine,[13] whose dream of Heaven ne'er could rise Beyond the brimming Kausar-cup and Houris with the white-black eyes;

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![14]

And "'Dust thou art to dust returning,' ne'er 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 we're 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," Isâ 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 microcrosm abides in ME; Eternal Allah's nought but I!"

Mansûr[15] was wise, but wiser they who smote him with the hurled stones; And, though his blood a witness bore, no wisdom-might could mend his bones.

"Eat, drink, and sport; the rest of life's not worth a fillip," quoth the King; Methinks the saying saith too much: the swine would say the self-same thing?

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[16] snarls and saunters down his Vale of Tears with confi'dent mien.

Wiser than Amrân's Son[17] art thou, who ken'st so well the world-to-be, The Future when the Past is not, the Present merest dreamery;

What know'st thou, man, of Life? and yet, for ever 'twixt the womb, the grave, Thou pratest of the Coming Life, of Heav'n 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 moment's 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 like cagèd birds, the captives of a despot will; Still wond'ring How and When and Why, and Whence and Whither, wond'ring still;

Still wond'ring how the Marvel came because two coupling mammals chose To slake the thirst of fleshly love, and thus the "Immortal Being" rose;

Wond'ring the Babe with staring eyes, perforce compell'd from night to day, Gript in the giant grasp of Life like gale-borne 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 Allah's choicest gift, the blessing dreamt by foolish men;

Who step by step perforce returns to countless youth, wan, white and cold, Lisping again his broken words till all the tale be fully told:

Wond'ring the Babe with quenched orbs, an oldster bow'd 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, dower'd 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, mortar'd 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 heav'nly 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;[18] Methinks I see him smile to see what guerdon to the world he gave!

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 Ocean's boundless tide, unfathom'd 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 Min'arets draw the Thunder-fire.

How Earth on Earth builds tow'er and wall, to crumble at a touch of Time; How Earth on Earth from Shinar-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 Time's 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 th 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 bod'ily 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 heav'enly 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.[19]

How sore the burden, strange the strife; how full of splendour, wonder, fear; Life, atom of that Infinite Space that stretches 'twixt the Here and There.

How Thought is imp'otent 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' unpattern'd 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 ne'er brought; Shall brooding breed a thought of joy? Ah hush the sigh, forget the thought!

Silence thine immemorial quest, contain thy nature's 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 Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?

* * * * *

What Truths hath gleaned that Sage consumed by many a moon that waxt and waned? What Prophet-strain be his to sing? What hath his old Experience gained?

There is no God, no man-made God; a bigger, stronger, crueller man; Black phantom of our baby-fears, ere Thought, the life of Life, began.

Right quoth the Hindu Prince of old,[20] "An Ishwara for one I nill, Th' almighty everlasting Good who cannot 'bate th' Eternal Ill:"

"Your gods may be, what shows they are?" Hear China's Perfect Sage declare;[21] "And being, what to us be they who dwell so darkly and so far?"

"All matter hath a birth and death; 'tis made, unmade and made anew; "We choose to call the Maker 'God':"--such is the Zâhid's owly view.

"You changeful finite Creatures strain" (rejoins the Drawer of the Wine)[22] "The dizzy depths of Inf'inite Power to fathom with your foot of twine;"

"Poor idols of man's heart and head with the Divine Idea to blend; "To preach as 'Nature's Common Course' what any hour may shift or end."

"How shall the Shown pretend to ken aught of the Showman or the Show? "Why meanly bargain to believe, which only means thou ne'er canst know?

"How may the passing Now contain the standing Now--Eternity?-- "An endless _is_ without a _was_, the _be_ and never the _to-be?_

"Who made your Maker? If Self-made, why fare so far to fare the worse? "Sufficeth not a world of worlds, a self-made chain of universe?

"Grant an Idea, Primal Cause, the Causing Cause, why crave for more? "Why strive its depth and breadth to mete, to trace its work, its aid to 'implore?

"Unknown, Incomprehensible, whate'er you choose to call it, call; "But leave it vague as airy space, dark in its darkness mystical.

"Your childish fears would seek a Sire, by the non-human God defin'd, "What your five wits may wot ye weet; what _is_ you please to dub 'design'd;'

"You bring down Heav'en to vulgar Earth; your Maker like yourselves you make, "You quake to own a reign of Law, you pray the Law its laws to break;

"You pray, but hath your thought e'er weighed how empty vain the prayer must be, "That begs a boon already giv'en, or craves a change of Law to see?

"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 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,[23] Adon or Elohim, the God that smites, the Man of War.

"The lovely Gods of lib'ertine Greece, those fair and frail humanities "Whose homes o'erlooked the Middle Sea, where all Earth's beauty cradled lies,

"Ne'er left its blessèd bounds, nor sought the barb'arous climes of barb'arous gods "Where Odin of the dreary North o'er hog and sickly mead-cup nods:

"And when, at length, 'Great Pan is dead' uprose the loud and dol'orous cry "A glamour wither'd on the ground, a splendour faded in the sky.

"Yea, Pan was dead, the Nazar'ene came and seized his seat beneath the sun, "The votary of the Riddle-god, whose one is three and three is one;

"Whose sadd'ening creed of herited Sin split o'er the world its cold grey spell; "In every vista showed a grave, and 'neath the grave the glare of Hell;

"Till all Life's Po'esy sinks to prose; romance to dull Real'ity fades; "Earth's flush of gladness pales in gloom and God again to man degrades.

"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.[24]

"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?

"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."

* * * * *

There is no Good, there is no Bad; these be the whims of mortal will: What works me weal that call I 'good,' what harm and hurts I hold as 'ill:'

They change with place, they shift with race; and, in the veriest span of Time, Each Vice has worn a Virtue's crown; all Good was banned as Sin or Crime:

Like ravelled skeins they cross and twine, while this with that connects and blends; And only Khizr[25] his eye shall see where one begins, where other ends:

What mortal shall consort with Khizr, when Musâ turned in fear to flee? What man foresees the flow'er or fruit whom Fate compels to plant the tree?

For Man's Free-will immortal Law, Anagkê, Kismet, Des'tiny read That was, that is, that aye shall be, Star, Fortune, Fate, Urd, Norn or Need.

"Man's nat'ural State is God's design"; such is the silly sage's theme; "Man's primal Age was Age of Gold"; such is the Poet's waking dream:

Delusion, Ign'orance! Long ere Man drew upon earth his earli'est 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.

Yon glorious Sun, the greater light, the "Bridegroom" of the royal Lyre, A flaming, boiling, bursting mine; a grim black orb of whirling fire:

That gentle Moon, the lesser light, the Lover's lamp, the Swain's delight, A ruined world, a globe burnt out, a corpse upon the road of night.

What reckt he, say, of Good or Ill who in the hill-hole made his lair, The blood-fed rav'ening Beast of prey, wilder than wildest wolf or bear?

How long in Man's pre-Ad'amite days to feed and swill, to sleep and breed, Were the Brute-biped's only life, a perfect life sans Code or Creed?

His choicest garb a shaggy fell, his choicest tool a flake of stone; His best of orn'aments tattoo'd skin and holes to hang his bits of bone;

Who fought for female as for food when Mays awoke to warm desire; And such the lust that grew to Love when Fancy lent a purer fire.

Where _then_ "Th' Eternal nature-law by God engraved on human heart"? Behold his simiad sconce and own the Thing could play no higher part.

Yet, as long ages rolled, he learnt from Beaver, Ape and Ant to build Shelter for sire and dam and brood, from blast and blaze that hurt and killed;

And last came Fire; when scrap of stone cast on the flame that lit his den, Gave out the shining ore, and made the Lord of beasts a Lord of men.

The "moral sense," your Zâhid-phrase, is but the gift of latest years; Conscience was born when man had shed his fur, his tail, his pointed ears.

What conscience has the murderous Moor, who slays his guest with felon blow, Save sorrow he can slay no more, what prick of pen'itence can he know?

You cry the "Cruelty of Things" is myst'ery to your purblind eye, Which fixed upon a point in space the general project passes by:

For see! the Mammoth went his ways, became a mem'ory and a name; While the half-reasoner with the hand[26] survives his rank and place to claim.

Earthquake and plague, storm, fight and fray, portents and curses man must deem Since he regards his self alone, nor cares to trace the scope, the scheme;

The Quake that comes in eyelid's beat to ruin, level, 'gulf and kill, Builds up a world for better use, to general Good bends special Ill:

The dreadest sound man's ear can hear, the war and rush of stormy Wind Depures the stuff of human life, breeds health and strength for humankind:

What call ye them or Goods or Ills, ill-goods, good-ills, a loss, a gain, When realms arise and falls a roof; a world is won, a man is slain?

And thus the race of Being runs, till haply in the time to be Earth shifts her pole and Mushtari-men[27] another falling star shall see:

Shall see it fall and fade from sight, whence come, where gone no Thought can tell,-- Drink of yon mirage-stream and chase the tinkling of the Camel-bell!

* * * * *

All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.

What is the Truth? was askt of yore. Reply all object Truth is one As twain of halves aye makes a whole; the moral Truth for all is none.

Ye scantly-learned Zâhids learn from Aflatûn and Aristû,[28] While Truth is real like your good: th' Untrue, like ill, is real too;

As palace mirror'd in the stream, as vapour mingled with the skies, So weaves the brain of mortal man the tangled web of Truth and Lies.

What see we here? Forms, nothing more! Forms fill the brightest strongest eye, We know not substance; 'mid the shades shadows ourselves we live and die.

"Faith mountains move" I hear: I see the practice of the world unheed The foolish vaunt, the blatant boast that serves our vanity to feed.

"Faith stands unmoved"; and why? Because man's silly fancies still remain, And will remain till wiser man the day-dreams of his youth disdain.

"'Tis blessèd to believe"; you say: The saying may be true enow An it can add to Life a light:--only remains to show us how.

E'en if I could I nould believe your tales and fables stale and trite, Irksome as twice-sung tune that tires the dullèd ear of drowsy wight.

With God's foreknowledge man's free will! what monster-growth of human brain, What pow'ers of light shall ever pierce this puzzle dense with words inane?

Vainly the heart on Providence calls, such aid to seek were hardly wise For man must own the pitiless Law that sways the globe and sevenfold skies.

"Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heav'en, come pay the priest that holds the key;" So spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak the last to enter Heaven,--he.

Are these the words for men to hear? yet such the Church's general tongue, The horseleech-cry so strong so high her heav'enward Psalms and Hymns among.

What? Faith a merit and a claim, when with the brain 'tis born and bred? Go, fool, thy foolish way and dip in holy water burièd dead![29]

Yet follow not th' unwisdom-path, cleave not to this and that disclaim; Believe in all that man believes; here all and naught are both the same.

But is it so? How may we know? Happily this Fate, this Law may be A word, a sound, a breath; at most the Zâhid's moonstruck theory.

Yes Truth may be, but 'tis not Here; mankind must seek and find it There, But Where nor _I_ nor _you_ can tell, nor aught earth-mother ever bare.

Enough to think that Truth can be: come sit we where the roses glow, Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to 'unknow.

* * * * *

Man hath no Soul, a state of things, a no-thing still, a sound, a word Which so begets substantial thing that eye shall see what ear hath heard.

Where was his Soul the savage beast which in primeval forests strayed, What shape had it, what dwelling-place, what part in nature's plan it played?

This Soul to ree a riddle made; who wants the vain duality? Is not myself enough for me? what need of "I" within an "I"?

Words, words that gender things! The soul is a new-comer on the scene; Sufficeth not the breath of Life to work the matter-born machine?

We know the Gen'esis of the Soul; we trace the Soul to hour of birth; We mark its growth as grew mankind to boast himself sole Lord of Earth:

The race of Be'ing from dawn of Life in an unbroken course was run; What men are pleased to call their Souls was in the hog and dog begun:

Life is a ladder infinite-stepped, that hides its rungs from human eyes; Planted its foot in chaos-gloom, its head soars high above the skies:

No break the chain of Being bears; all things began in unity; And lie the links in regular line though haply none the sequence see.

The Ghost, embodied natural Dread of dreary death and foul decay, Begat the Spirit, Soul and Shade with Hades' pale and wan array.

The Soul required a greater Soul, a Soul of Souls, to rule the host: Hence spirit-powers and hierarchies, all gendered by the savage Ghost.

Not yours, ye Peoples of the Book, these fairy visions fair and fond, Got by the gods of Khemi-land[30] and faring far the seas beyond!

"Th' immortal mind of mortal man"! we hear yon loud-lunged Zealot cry; Whose mind but means his sum of thought, an essence of atomic "I."

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."

Vain cavil! all that is hath come either by Mir'acle or by Law;-- Why waste on this your hate and fear, why waste on that your love and awe?

Why heap such hatred on a word, why "Prototype" to type assign, Why upon matter spirit mass? wants an appendix your design?

Is not the highest honour his who from the worst hath drawn the best; May not your Maker make the world from matter, an it suit His best?

Nay more, the sordider the stuff the cunninger the workman's hand: Cease, then, your own Almighty Power to bind, to bound, to understand.

"Reason and Instinct!" How we love to play with words that please our pride; Our noble race's mean descent by false forged titles seek to hide!

For "gift divine" I bid you read the better work of higher brain, From Instinct diff'ering in degree as golden mine from leaden vein.

Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue: Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

"Fools rush where Angels fear to tread!" Angels and Fools have equal claim To do what Nature bids them do, sans hope of praise, sans fear of blame!

* * * * *

There is no Heav'en, there is no Hell; these be the dreams of baby minds; Tools of the wily Fetisheer, to 'fright the fools his cunning blinds.

Learn from the mighty Spi'rits of old to set thy foot on Heav'en and Hell; In life to find thy hell and heav'en as thou abuse or use it well.

So deemed the doughty Jew who dared by studied silence low to lay Orcus and Hades, lands of shades, the gloomy night of human day.

Hard to the heart is final death: fain would an _Ens_ not end in _Nil_; Love made the senti'ment kindly good: the Priest perverted all to ill.

While Reason sternly bids us die, Love longs for life beyond the grave: Our hearts, affections, hopes and fears for Life-to-be shall ever crave.

Hence came the despot's darling dream, a Church to rule and sway the State; Hence sprang the train of countless griefs in priestly sway and rule innate.

For future Life who dares reply? No witness at the bar have we; Save what the brother Potsherd tells,--old tales and novel jugglery.

Who e'er return'd to teach the Truth, the things of Heaven and Hell to limn? And all we hear is only fit for grandam-talk and nursery-hymn.

"Have mercy, man?" the Zâhid cries, "of our best visions rob us not! "Mankind a future life must have to balance life's unequal lot."

"Nay," quoth the Magian, "'tis not so; I draw my wine for one for all. "A cup for this, a score for that, e'en as his measure's great or small:

"Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight; to poorest passion he was born; "Who drains the score must e'er expect to rue the headache of the morn."

Safely he jogs along the way which "Golden Mean" the sages call; Who scales the brow of frowning Alp must face full many a slip and fall.

Here èxtremes meet, anointed Kings whose crowned heads uneasy lie, Whose cup of joy contains no more than tramps that on the dunghill die.

To fate-doomed Sinner born and bred for dangling from the gallows-tree; To Saint who spends his holy days in rapturous hope his God to see;

To all that breathe our upper air the hands of Dest'iny ever deal, In fixed and equal parts, their shares of joy and sorrow, woe and weal.

"How comes it, then, our span of days in hunting wealth and fame we spend? "Why strive we (and all humans strive) for vain and visionary end?"

Reply; mankind obeys a law that bids him labour, struggle, strain; The Sage well knowing its unworth, the Fool a-dreaming foolish gain.

And who, 'mid e'en the Fools, but feels that half the joy is in the race For wealth and fame and place, nor sighs when comes success to crown the chase?

Again: In Hind, Chin, Franguestân that accident of birth befell, Without our choice, our will, our voice: Faith is an accident as well.

What to the Hindu saith the Frank: "Denier of the Laws divine! However godly-good thy Life, Hell is the home for thee and thine."

"Go strain the draught before 'tis drunk, and learn that breathing every breath, "With every step, with every gest, some thing of life thou do'est to death."

Replies the Hindu: "Wend thy way for foul and foolish Mlenchhas fit; "Your Pariah-par'adise woo and win; at such dog-Heav'en I laugh and spit.

"Cannibals of the Holy Cow! who make your rav'ening maws the grave "Of Things with self-same right to live;--what Fiend the filthy license gave?"

What to the Moslem cries the Frank? "A polygamic Theist thou! "From an impostor-Prophet turn; thy stubborn head to Jesus bow."

Rejoins the Moslem: "Allah's one tho' with four Moslemahs I wive, "One-wife-men ye and (damnèd race!) you split your God to Three and Five."

The Buddhist to Confucians thus: "Like dogs ye live, like dogs ye die; "Content ye rest with wretched earth; God, judgment, Hell ye fain defy."

Retorts the Tartar: "Shall I lend mine only ready-money 'now,' For vain usurious 'Then' like thine, avaunt, a triple idiot Thou!"

"With this poor life, with this mean world I fain complete what in me lies; I strive to perfect this my me; my sole ambition's to be wise."

When doctors differ who decides amid the milliard-headed throng? Who save the madman dares to cry: "'Tis I am right, you all are wrong"?

"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.

"For gen'erous youth," an Arab saith. "Jahim's[31] the only genial state; "Give us the fire but not the shame with the sad, sorry blest to mate."

And if your Heav'en and Hell be true, and Fate that forced me to be born Force me to Heav'en or Hell--I go, and hold Fate's insolence in scorn.

I want not this, I want not that, already sick of Me and Thee; And if we're both transform'd and changed, what then becomes of Thee and Me?

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.

* * * * *

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;[32] 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?

One way, two paths, one end the grave. This runs athwart the flow'ery plain, That breasts the bush, the steep, the crag, in sun and wind and snow and rain:

Who treads the first must look adown, must deem his life an all in all; Must see no heights where man may rise, must sight no depths where man may fall.

Allah in Adam form must view; adore the Maker in the made Content to bask in Mâyâ's smile,[33] in joys of pain, in lights of shade,

He breaks the Law, he burns the Book, he sends the Moolah back to school; Laughs at the beards of Saintly men; and dubs the Prophet dolt and fool.

Embraces Cypress' taper-waist; cools feet on wavy breast of rill; Smiles in the Nargis' love-lorn eyes, and 'joys the dance of Daffodil;

Melts in the saffron light of Dawn to hear the moaning of the Dove; Delights in Sundown's purpling hues when Bulbul woos the Rose's love.

Finds mirth and joy in Jamshid-bowl; toys with the Daughter of the vine; And bids the beauteous cup-boy say, "Master I bring thee ruby wine!"[34]

Sips from the maiden's lips the dew; brushes the bloom from virgin brow:-- Such is his fleshly bliss that strives the Maker through the Made to know.

I've tried them all, I find them all so same and tame, so drear, so dry; My gorge ariseth at the thought; I commune with myself and cry:--

Better the myriad toils and pains that make the man to manhood true, This be the rule that guideth life; these be the laws for me and you:

With Ignor'ance wage eternal war, to know thy self for ever strain, Thine ignorance of thine ignorance is thy fiercest foe, thy deadliest bane;

That blunts thy sense, and dulls thy taste; that deafs thine ears, and blinds thine eyes; Creates the thing that never was, the Thing that ever is defies.

The finite Atom infinite that forms thy circle's centre-dot, So full-sufficient for itself, for other selves existing not,

Finds the world mighty as 'tis small; yet must be fought the unequal fray; A myriad giants here; and there a pinch of dust, a clod of clay.

Yes! maugre all thy dreams of peace still must the fight unfair be fought; Where thou may'st learn the noblest law, to know that all we know is nought.

True to thy Nature, to Thyself, Fame and Disfame nor hope nor fear: Enough to thee the small still voice aye thund'ering in thine inner ear.

From self-approval seek applause: What ken not men thou kennest, thou! Spurn ev'ry idol others raise: Before thine own Ideal bow:

Be thine own Deus: Make self free, liberal as the circling air: Thy Thought to thee an Empire be; break every prison'ing lock and bar:

Do Thou the Ought to self aye owed; here all the duties meet and blend, In widest sense, withouten care of what began, for what shall end.

Thus, as thou view the Phantom-forms which in the misty Past were thine, To be again the thing thou wast with honest pride thou may'st decline;

And, glancing down the range of years, fear not thy future self to see; Resign'd to life, to death resign'd, as though the choice were nought to thee.

On Thought itself feed not thy thought; nor turn from Sun and Light to gaze, At darkling cloisters paved with tombs, where rot the bones of bygone days:

"Eat not thy heart," the Sages said; "nor mourn the Past, the buried Past;" Do what thou dost, be strong, be brave; and, like the Star, nor rest nor haste.

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 difference 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[35] than Death that walks in form of life.

Survey thy kind as One whose wants in the great Human Whole unite;[36] The Homo rising high from earth to seek the Heav'ens of Life-in-Light;

And hold Humanity one man, whose universal agony Still strains and strives to gain the goal, where agonies shall cease to be.

Believe in all things; none believe; judge not nor warp by "Facts" the thought; See clear, hear clear, tho' life may seem Mâyâ and Mirage, Dream and Naught.

Abjure the Why and seek the How: the God and gods enthroned on high, Are silent all, are silent still; nor hear thy voice, nor deign reply.

The Now, that indivis'ible point which studs the length of infinite line Whose ends are nowhere, is thine all, the puny all thou callest thine.

Perchance the law some Giver hath: Let be! let be! what canst thou know? A myriad races came and went; this Sphinx hath seen them come and go.

Haply the Law that rules the world allows to man the widest range; And haply Fate's a Theist-word, subject to human chance and change.

This "I" may find a future Life, a nobler copy of our own. Where every riddle shall be ree'd, where every knowledge shall be known;

Where 'twill be man's to see the whole of what on Earth he sees in part; Where change shall ne'er surcharge the thought; nor hope deferr'd shall hurt the heart.

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.

Then, if Nirwânâ[37] round our life with nothingness, 'tis haply best; Thy toils and troubles, want and woe at length have won their guerdon--Rest.

Cease, Abdû, Cease! Thy song is sung, nor think the gain the singer's prize; Till men hold Ignor'ance deadly sin, till man deserves his title "Wise:"[38]

In Days to come, Days slow to dawn, when Wisdom deigns to dwell with men, These echoes of a voice long stilled haply shall wake responsive strain;

Wend now thy way with brow serene, fear not thy humble tale to tell;-- The whispers of the Desert-wind; the Tinkling of the Camel's bell.

טלם

[Sidenote: _The End of the Kasîdah--Christian Poetry._]

But then, again, a year later I find amongst his writings:--

"Man wendeth to his long, long home, About the streets the mourners go; Behold the tomb, and hereby mete The length and depth of mortal woe. Thou hast nor lover, kin, nor friend! The deepest grief hath shallows.

"Ah yes, thou hast; but close thine eyes Upon this world and gaze above. There, and there only, shalt thou find Unchanging and unmeasured love. Then dare the way, and meekly bend Thy footsteps t'ward the heavenly Friend.

"Dies Iræ! Lord, Saviour, God, my only stay, Desert me not that dreadful day."

Richard's idea was that every man, by doing all the good he could in this life, always working for others, for the human race, always acting "Excelsior," should leave a track of light behind him on this World as he passes through. His idea of God was so immeasurably grander than anything people are _usually_ taught to think about God. It always seemed to him that we dwindled God down to our own mean imaginations; that we made something like ourselves, only bigger, and far crueller. There is some truth in this; we are always talking about God just as if we understood Him. His idea of a Divine Being was so infinite, so great, that to pray to Him was an impertinence; that it was monstrous that we should expect Him to alter one of His decrees, because _we_ prayed for it; that He was a God of big universal love, but so far off, as to be far above anything we can understand. These were the _utmost_ extent of his _own_ Agnostic fits.

Almost contemporary with these sentiments, I find the following verses:--

1. "Bright imaged in the glassy lake below, Crisped by the zephyrs' nimble run, I saw two sister stars appear. I looked above, there shone but one; Then fled the zephyrs, and my eye The sole reflection could descry.

2. "Then rising high, the crescent skiff Thro' the deep azure rolled its way; On earth a misty shadow lay, While all of heaven was bright and gay. Then waxed the night cloud thin and rare, And died within its home, the air.

3. "Thus senses that improve the soul To deadliest error oft give birth; Dust-born, they grovel and apply To highest heaven low rubs of earth, Fell fatal masters where they sway, Obedient slaves when taught t' obey.

4. "Nor let th' immortal "I" depend On Reason, blind and faithless guide, Who knowing nothing knoweth all Of mortal folly--human pride; Not thus may truth be wooed and won-- A _reasonable_ creed is none.

5. "Who then thy falt'ring steps may lead O'er the wild waste of doubt and fear, Where sense and reason shed no ray? The marks and glooms what light may clear? Shall nature tread a law-girt course, While man walks earth a living corpse?

6. "Ah, no! there is a heavenly guide That leads, directs this fragile clay; We call it spirit, soul, and life, Let mortal call it as he may; Man, go not far, seek not elsewhere; Search that within--Truth dwelleth _there_."

He was always in one of the two extremes, meaning _All_ or _Nothing_. It is what we Catholics call "resisting of Divine grace;" it is what Agnostics would call "resisting a temptation," or the correct shibboleth, I believe, is "upholding his integrity," _i.e._ disbelieving in God and another _world_, which he _never did_ at any time of his life.

[1] He was so broad and muscular that he did not look more than five feet nine--but he really was two inches taller, and the one complaint of his life was not to be able to grow another inch to make six feet.

[2] "The _Tayyárah_, or 'Flying Caravan,' is lightly laden, and travels by forced marches."

[3] "The _Rakb_ is a dromedary-caravan, in which each person carries only his saddle-bags. It usually descends by the road called El Khabt, and makes Mecca on the fifth day."

[4] "By the term 'fatted ass' the intellectual lady alluded to her royal husband."

[5] N.B.--I have still got some of Richard's bottles of this holy water, if any one would wish to analyze it.--I. B.

[6] N.B.--I found in later years he had recently copied into this part of his journal, from some paper, "The Meditations of a Hindu Prince and Sceptic," by the author of "The Old Pindaree"--

"All the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod, Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God? Westward across the ocean, and Northward ayont the snow, Do they all stand gazing, as ever? and what do the wisest know?

"Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm, Like the wild bees heard in the treetops, or the gusts of a gathering storm; In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen, Yet we all say, 'Whence is the message? and what may the wonders mean?'

"Shall I list to the word of the English, who came from the uttermost sea? 'The secret, hath it been told you? and what is your message to me?' It is nought but the wide-world story how the earth and the heavens began; How the gods are glad and angry, and a Deity once a man.

"I had thought, 'Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell, Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell, They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown main:' Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain.

"Is life, then, a dream and delusion? and where shall the dreamer awake? Is the world seen like shadows on water? and what if the mirror break? Shall it pass, as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered and gone, From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and lone?

"Is there nought in the heavens above, whence the hail and the levin are hurled, But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world?-- The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and the voices of women who weep."

[7] I have only given the barest outlines of what took place, referring my readers to the original, because, as there were between fifty and fifty-five mosques, besides other places, and various interesting ceremonies to be performed in each one, there would be no room for anything else; and the same may be said of El Medinah.--I. B.

[8] On the _Dwárká_, before he had time to go down to the cabin and change his clothes, one of his English brother officers, who was on board the ship, gave him a sly kick, and said, "Get out of the way, you dirty nigger." He often told me how he longed to hit him, but did not dare to betray himself. He was also part of the way in the Red Sea with my cousin William Strickland, a priest, and he used to tease him by sitting opposite to him, reciting his Korán out loud, while William was saying his breviary also out loud. At last one day Strickland got up, saying, "Oh, my God, I can't stand this much more," and afterwards these two became great friends.--I. B.

[9] This is absolutely untrue. Since Richard's death, two Englishmen, out of jealousy, have made this remark--one only knew Syrian Christian Arabic; the other, the dialect of Suez.

[10] The false dawn.

[11] The Demon of the Desert.

[12] Arafât, near Mecca.

[13] Hâfiz of Shirâz.

[14] Omar-i-Khayyâm, the tent-maker poet of Persia.

[15] A famous Mystic stoned for blasphemy.

[16] The "Philister" of "respectable" belief.

[17] Moses in the Korán.

[18] The Abana, River of Damascus.

[19] Death in Arabia rides a Camel, not a pale horse.

[20] Buddha.

[21] Confucius.

[22] The Soofi or Gnostic opposed to the Zâhid.

[23] Jehovah.

[24] Kayâni--of the race of Cyrus; old Guebre heroes.

[25] Supposed to be the Prophet Elijah.

[26] The Elephant.

[27] Mushtari: the Planet Jupiter.

[28] Plato and Aristotle.

[29] I think he is alluding, though he has not expressed it, to the Marcionites' heresy of baptizing for the dead. The Marcionites were heretics who lived at Sinope, A.D. 150. Marcian came to Rome and believed in principles similar to the Manichæans. When a man died, one of the Marcionites sat on his coffin, and another asked him if he were willing to be baptised, and he answered, "Yes," upon which he was baptised. These heretics quoted Paul (1 Cor. xv. 29): "Else what shall they do which are baptised for the dead, if the dead do not rise at all? why are they then baptised for the dead?"--ISABEL BURTON.

[30] Egypt; Kam, Kem, Khem (hierogl.), in the Demotic Khemi.

[31] Jehannum, Gehenna, Hell.

[32] Emblems of Kismet, or Destiny.

[33] Illusion.

[34] That all the senses, even the ear may enjoy.

[35] The Angel of Death.

[36] The "Great Man" of the Enochites and the Mormons.

[37] Comparative annihilation.

[38] "Homo sapiens."