Page:The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Volume 08.djvu/41



This faithless world, my home, I have surveyed,

Yea, and with all my wit deep question made,

But found no moon with face so bright as thine,

No cypress in such stateliness arrayed.

In synagogue and cloister, mosque and school,

Hell's terrors and heaven's lures men's bosoms rule,

But they who master Allah's mysteries,

Sow not this empty chad their hearts to fool.

You see the world, but all you see is naught,

And all you say, and all you hear is naught,

Naught the four quarters of the mighty earth,

The secrets treasured in your chamber naught.

I dreamt a sage said, "Wherefore life consume

In sleep? Can sleep make pleasure's roses bloom?

For gather not with death's twin-brother sleep,

Thou wilt have sleep enough within thy tomb! "

If the heart knew life's secrets here below,

At death 'twould know God's secrets too, I trow;

But, if you know naught here, while still yourself,

To-morrow, stripped of self, what can you know?

On that dread day, when wrath shall rend the sky,

And darkness dim the bright stars' galaxy,

I'll seize the Loved One by His skirt, and cry,

"Why hast Thou doomed these guiltless ones to die? "