While "other" and "others" are set before your eyes, Though you be in a mosque, it is no better than a

cloister.

When the vesture of "other" passes out of sight,
The cloister becomes to you as a mosque. '

I know not of what religion you are,

Overcome your adversary the flesh, that you may escape.

Idols, girdles, Christianity and church bells

All indicate the abandonment of name and fame.
If you would be a true servant,

Prepare yourself in truth and sincerity.

Go, take yourself out of your own road,
Every moment give up your life for the faith.
While infidelity dwells in your inmost soul,
Be not satisfied with this outward Islam.
Of yourself every moment renew your faith,
Be a Musulman, Be a Musulman, Be a Musulman!
Many faiths have sprung from infidelity,

That is not infidelity from which faith springs.

Abandon hypocrisy and sounding fame,

Cast off the Durvesh cloak, bind on the Magian girdle.

Be as our Magian sage in pure infidelity,

If you are a man, give your heart to manliness.

Hanifs, mentioned in the Talmud, seem to have instructed Muhammad in the Jewish faith and doctrines.

1 Compare Cowper's well-known lines

Is virtue then unless of Christian growth
Mere fallacy or foolishness or both? &c.

P

Give your mind wholly to the young Christian,
Purge yourself from affirmations and negations.

INDICATION III.

On Idols (images) and young Christians.

Idols and young Christians are the Light-made manifest,

For it is displayed to outward view in the idol's face.
It sends good tidings to all hearts,

Now by the minstrel,-now by the cup-bearer.
What a minstrel is that who by his sweet melody
Burns up the garners of a hundred devotees !
What a cup-bearer is that who by a single cup
Makes drunken two hundred and seventy years!
If he enters the mosque at early dawn,
He leaves not a single sober man the rein.
If he enters the cloister drunken at night,
He makes incantations with Sufis' stories.
If he enters the college as a veiled drunkard,
The professor becomes helplessly drunken.

From love of that fair idol this devotee lost his head,
And became an outcast from house and home.

All my affair has been achieved through him,
Through him I gained deliverance from infidel lust.
He makes one faithful, another an infidel,
He fills the world with tumult and wrong.
Ruined places have been restored by his lips,
Mosques have been illumined by his cheek.

My heart was shut off from knowledge of self by a

hundred veils,

By the pride and vanity of demon conceit.

That fair idol entered my door at early morn,
And wakened me from the sleep of negligence.

By his face the secret chamber of my soul was lighted up,
Thereby I saw myself as I really am.

When I looked at my own face

I heaved a sigh of wonder from my soul.
He said to me "O Pharisee and hypocrite,

"Thy life has been spent in seeking name and fame,
"Behold this knowledge, devotion, and vanity of thine,
"From what have they kept thee back, O laggard!
"To cast one glance on my face for half a moment,
"Is worth a thousand years of devotion."

In fine the face of that world-adorner

Was disclosed and unveiled before my eyes.
The face of my soul was blackened with shame
To think of my life lost and my wasted days.
But when that moon, whose face was as the sun,
Saw that I had cast away hope from my soul,
He filled a goblet and gave it me to drink,

And from that draught fire was kindled within me.
"Now," quoth he, "with this wine tasteless and
odourless,

"Wash from thee the stains of base existence."

When I had drunk that pure draught,

I fell out of existence on the bare dust.

Now I neither exist in myself, nor do I not exist,
I am not sober, not sick, not drunken. '
Sometimes like his eye I am joyful,

Sometimes like his curls I am shining with fire.
Sometimes by force of nature I am lying on ashes,
Sometimes at a look from him I am in the rose garden.

2

See the nearly parallel language of St. Theresa, cited in Vaughan. Says Jeremy Taylor:-"Indeed, when persons have been long softened with the continual droppings of religion, and their spirits made timorous and apt for impression by the assiduity of prayer, and perpetual alarms of death, and the continual dyings of mortification, the fancy, which is a very great instrument of devotion, is kept continually warm, and in a disposition and aptitude to take fire and to flame out in great ascents, and when they suffer transportations beyond the burdens and support of reason, they suffer they know not what, and call it what they please."

2

Compare the concluding lines of the poem to Jami's Salaman of

Absal

Me from my self withdraw, and join to Thee,

Grant me a place in Thy great Unity!

Then I escaped from personality

Shall cry, 'Is it Thou O God, or is it I.

'If it be I, then whence this power divine?

'If Thou, whence comes this frailty of mine ?'"

EPILOGUE.

From that rose garden I have kept this token,
Which I have named "the mystic rose garden."
Therein the roses of mystery are blooming,
Whereof none has told before.

Therein the tongues of the lilies are all vocal;
The eyes of the narcissus are all eloquent.
Regard each one with the eyes of the heart
Till your doubts have vanished from before you.
Behold verities, as well traditional as rational,
Ranged in order with knowledge of minutiæ.
Seek not with captious eyes to find blemishes,
For then the roses will turn to thorns in your sight.
Ingratitude is a mark of ignorance,

But gratitude for truth shows knowledge of truth.
I hope that when that noble' calls me to mind,

He may say of me "Mercy be unto him."

I conclude this epilogue with my own name, "O God, grant me a praised end."

1 'Azizi.' Tholuck takes this as the titular name (Takhallas) of the poet, but it more probably refers to the noble mentioned in the com.

mencement of the poem.

2i.e., Mahmud.