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.

F. B.

Vienna, Nov., 1880.

THE KASÎDAH

I

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 sweeps the paling East to leave a deeper gloom behind, And Dawn uprears her shining head, sighing with semblance of a wind: * The false dawn. The highlands catch yon Orient gleam, while purpling still the lowlands lie; And pearly mists, the morning-pride, soar incense-like to greet the sky. The horses neigh, the camels groan, the torches gleam, the cressets flare; The town of canvas falls, and man with din and dint invadeth air: The Golden Gates swing right and left; up springs the Sun with flamy brow; The dew-cloud melts in gush of light; brown Earth is bathed in morning-glow. Slowly they wind athwart the wild, and while young Day his anthem swells, Sad falls upon my yearning ear the tinkling of the Camel-bells: O’er fiery wastes and frozen wold, o’er horrid hill and gloomy glen, The home of grisly beast and Ghoul, the haunts of wilder, grislier men;— * The Demon of the Desert. With the brief gladness of the Palms,

that tower and sway 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.* * Arafât, near Mecca. But we? Another shift of scene, another pang to rack the heart; Why meet we on the bridge of Time to ’change one greeting and to part? We meet to part; yet asks my sprite, Part we to meet? Ah! is it so? 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.

II

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,* whose dream of Heaven ne’er could rise Beyond the brimming Kausar-cup and Houris with the white-black eyes; * Hâfiz of Shirâz. Ah me! my race of threescore years is short, but long enough to pall My sense with joyless joys as these, with Love and Houris, Wine and all. Another boasts he would divorce

old barren Reason from his bed, And wed the Vine-maid in her stead;— fools who believe a word he said! * Omar-i-Kayyâm, the tent-maker poet of Persia. 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 microcosm abides in ME; Eternal Allah’s nought but I!” Mansûr was wise, but wiser they who smote him with the hurlèd stones; And, though his blood a witness bore, no wisdom-might could mend his bones. * A famous Mystic stoned for blasphemy. “Eat, drink, and sport; the rest of life’s

not worth a fillip,” quoth the King; Methinks the saying saith too much: the swine would say the selfsame thing! Two-footed beasts that browse through life, by Death to serve as soil 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 snarls and saunters down his Vale of Tears with confi’dent mien. * The “Philister” of “respectable” belief. Wiser than Amrân’s Son art thou, who ken’st so well the world-to-be, The Future when the Past is not, the Present merest dreamery; * Moses in the Koran. What know’st thou, man, of Life? and yet, forever 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!

III.

Fie, fie! you visionary things, ye motes that dance in sunny glow, Who base and build Eternities on briefest moment here below; Who pass through Life liked cagèd birds, the captives of a despot will; Still 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 compel’d from night to day, Gript in the giant grasp of Life like gale-born dust or wind-wrung spray; Who comes imbecile to the world ’mid double danger, groans, and tears; The toy, the sport, the waif and stray of passions, error, wrath and fears; Who knows not Whence he came nor Why, who kens not Whither bound and When, Yet such is Allah’s choicest gift, the blessing dreamt by foolish men; Who step by step perforce returns to couthless youth, wan, white and cold, Lisping again his broken words till all the tale be fully told: Wond’ring the Babe with quenchèd 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 rav’ening wind; How lovely visions ’guiled his sleep, aye fading with the break of morn, Till every sweet became a sour, till every rose became a thorn; Till dust and ashes met his eyes wherever turned their saddened gaze; The wrecks of joys and hopes and loves, the rubbish of his wasted days; 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;* Methinks I see him smile to see what guerdon to the world he gave! * The Abana, River of Damascus. How Life is dim, unreal, vain, like scenes that round the drunkard reel; How “Being” meaneth not to be; to see and hear, smell, taste and feel. A drop in 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 Shînar-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 the ’abysmal goal how fleet the waters flash and flow! And Deaths are twain; the Deaths we see drop like the leaves in windy Fall; But ours, our own, are ruined worlds, a globe collapst, last end of all. We live our lives with rogues and fools, dead and alive, alive and dead, We die ’twixt one who feels the pulse and one who frets and clouds the head:

And,—oh, the Pity!—hardly conned the lesson comes its fatal term; Fate bids us bundle up our books, and bear them 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.* * Death in Arabia rides a Camel, not a pale horse. How sore the burden, strange the strife; how full of splendour, wonder, fear; Life, atom of that Infinite Space that stretcheth ’twixt the Here and There. How Thought is 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?

IV

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, “An Ishwara for one I nill, Th’ almighty everlasting Good who cannot ’bate th’ Eternal Ill:” * Buddha. “Your gods may be, what shows they are?” hear China’s Perfect Sage declare; “And being, what to us be they who dwell so darkly and so far?” Confucius. “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) “The dizzy depths of Inf’inite Power to fathom with your foot of twine”; * The Soofi or Gnostic opposed to the Zâhid. “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,* Adon or Elohîm, the God that smites, the Man of War. * Jehovah. “The lovely Gods of lib’ertine Greece, those fair and frail humanities “Whose homes o’erlook’d 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 spilt 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.*

* Kayâni—of the race of Cyrus; old Guebre heroes. “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.”

V

There is no Good, there is no Bad; these be the whims of mortal will: What works me weal that call I ‘good,’ what harms 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* his eye shall see where one begins, where other ends: * Supposed to be the Prophet Elijah. 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 earliest breath The world was one contin’uous scene of anguish, torture, prey and Death;