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In November, 1933, His Majesty the Leader of the Faithful the now-martyred Nadir Shah Ghazi granted the author permission to visit the shrine of The sage Sana‘i of Ghazna. These verses were written in commemoration of the event, in imitation of a famous panegyric by the poet—‘We are coming after Sina‘i and Attar.’

All Nature’s vastness cannot contain you, oh My madness: vain, those wanderings to and fro In deserts!

By selfhood only are the spells Of sense broken,— that power we did not know.

Rub your eyes, sluggard! Light is Nature’s law, And not unknown to Ocean its waves flow.

Where reason and revelation war, faith errs To think the Mystic on his cross its foe,

For God’s pure souls, in thralldom or on thrones, Have one safe shield, his scorn of this world’s show.

But do not, Gabriel, envy my rapture: better For Heaven’s dounce folk the prayer and the beads’ neat row!

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I have seen many a wine‐shop East and West; But here no Saki, there in the grape no glow.

In Iran no more, in Tartary no more, Those world-renouncers who could overthrow Great kings

the Prophet’s heir filches and sells The blankets of the Prophet’s kin.

When to The Lord I was denounced for crying Doomsday Too soon, by that Archangel who must blow

Its trumpet, God made answer—Is Doomsday far When Makkah sleeps while China worships?

The bowl of faith finds none to pour, the beaker Of modern thought brims with the wine of No.

Subdued by the dexterous fiddler’s chords there murmurs In the lowest string the wail of Europe’s woe

Her waters that have bred the shark now breed The storm-wave that will smash its den below!

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Slavery—exile from the love of beauty: Beauty—whatever free men reckon so;

Trust no slave’s eyes, clear sight and liberty Go hand in hand. His own resolves bestow

The empire of Today on him who fishes Tomorrow’s pearl up from Time’s undertow.

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The Frankish glassblowers’ arts can make stone run: My alchemy makes glass flint-hard.

Pharaoh Plotted and plots against me; but what harm? Heaven lifts my hand, like Moses’, white as snow;

Earth’s rubbish-heaps can never quell this spark God struck to light whole deserts, His flambeau!

Love, self-beholding, self-sustaining, stands Un-awed at the gates of Caesar or Khosro;

If moon or Pleiades fall my prey, what wonder— Myself bound fast to the Prophet’s saddle-bow!

He—Guide, Last Envoy, Lord of All—lent brightness Of Sinai to our dust; Love’s eyes, not slow

To kindle, hail him Alpha and Omega, Chapter, and Word, and Book.

I would not go Pearl-diving there, for reverence of Sina‘i; But in these tides a million pearls still grow.