Page:The Luzumiyat of Abu'l-Ala.djvu/30



And here is the same idea, done in a large picture. The translation, literal too, is mine:

'T is strange that Kusrah and his people wash
 * Their faces in the staling of the kine;

And that the Christians say, Almighty God
 * Was tortured, mocked, and crucified in fine:

And that the Jews should picture Him as one
 * Who loves the odor of a roasting chine;

And stranger still that Muslems travel far
 * To kiss a black stone said to be divine:—

Almighty God! will all the human race
 * Stray blindly from the Truth's most sacred shrine?v

The East still remains the battle-ground of the creeds. And the Europeans, though they shook off their fetters of moral and spiritual slavery, would keep us in ours to facilitate the conquests of European commence. Thus the terrible Dragon, which is fed by the foreign missionary and the native priest, by the theologians and the ulama, and which still preys upon the heart and mind of Orient nations, is as active to-day as it was ten centuries ago. Let those consider this, who think Von Kremer exaggerated when he said, "Abu'l-Ala is a poet many centuries ahead of his time."