“To gladden one poor heart of man is more,
Be sure, than fanes a thousand to restore:
And one free man by kindness to enslave
Is better than to free of slaves a score.”
“O Thou whose Visage makes our world so fair,
Whose union, night and day, is all man's prayer,
Art kinder unto others? Woe is me!
But woe to them if they my anguish share!”
“In search of martyrdom the Gházís go
*
To fight Faith's battles: do they then not know
That martyred lovers higher rank, as slain
By hand of Friend, and not by hand of Foe?”
“Let no one of Thy boundless Grace despair;
Thine own elect shall ever upward fare:
The mote, if once illumined by Thy Sun,
The brightness of a thousand suns shall share.”
“Till Mosque and College fall 'neath Ruin's ban,
And Doubt and Faith be interchanged in man,
How can the Order of the Qalandars
*
Prevail, and raise up one true Musulmán?”
“Sir, blame me not if wine I drink, or spend
My life in striving Wine and Love to blend;
When sober, I with rivals sit; but when
Beside myself, I am beside the Friend.”
“Said I, ‘To whom belongs thy Beauty!’ He
Replied, ‘Since I alone exist, to Me;
Lover, Beloved and Love am I in one,
Beauty, and Mirror, and the Eyes which see!’”
“I sought the Leech and told my inward Pain:
Said he, 'From speech of all but Him refrain;
As for thy diet, Heart's-blood shall it be,
And from both Worlds thy thoughts shalt thou restrain.”
“Those men who lavish on me titles fair
Know not my heart, nor what is hidden there;
But, if they once could turn me inside out,
They'd doom me to the Burning, that I'll swear!”
“Thou bid'st me love, and midst Thy lovers pine,
Of Sense and Reason strip'st this Heart of mine;
Devout and much revered was I, but now
Toper, and gad-about, and libertine.”
“That Moon in Beauty rich and Constancy,
Beauty's high Zenith is His least Degree;
Gaze on His Sun-bright Face; or, can'st thou not,
On those dark curls which bear it company.”
“My countenance is blanched of Islám's hue;
More honour to a Frankish dog is due!
So black with shame's my visage that of me
Hell is ashamed, and Hell's despairing crew.”
“When me at length Thy Love's Embrace shall claim
To glance at Paradise I'd deem it shame,
While to a Thee-less Heaven were I called,
Such Heaven and Hell to me would seem the same.”
“What time nor Stars nor Skies existent were,
Nor Fire nor Water was, nor Earth, nor Air,
Nor Form, nor Voice, nor Understanding, I
The Secrets of God's One-ness did declare.”
“Brahmin, before that cheek rose-tinted bow
Of fourteen-year-old beauty, for I vow
That, failing eyes God-seeing, to adore
Fire is more fit than to adore a cow!”*
“O God, I crave Thy Grace for hapless me!
For hapless me enough Thy Clemency!
Each some protector, some defender claims;
But I, poor friendless I, have none but Thee!”
“By whatsoever Path, blesséd the Feet
Which seek Thee; blesséd He who strives to meet
Thy Beauty; blesséd they who on it gaze,
And blessed every tongue which Thee doth greet!”
“The Gnostic, who hath known the Mystery,
Is one with God, and from his Self-hood free:
Affirm God's Being and deny thine own:
This is the meaning of ‘no god but HE.’”
“Last night I passed in converse with the Friend,
Who strove to break the vows which I would mend:
The long Night passed: the Tale was scarce begun:
Blame not the Night, the Tale hath ne'er an end!”
“Since first I was, ne'er far from Thee I've been;
My lucky star hath served me well, I ween;
Extinguished in Thine Essence, if extinct,
And if existent, by Thy Light I'm seen.”
And here, to conclude, is the quatrain ascribed to Avicenna, with the reply of Shaykh Abú Sa'íd. The former runs:—
“'Tis we who on God's Grace do most rely,
Who put our vices and our virtues by,
For where Thy Grace exists, the undone done
Is reckoned, and the done undone thereby.”
This is Abú Sa'íd's reply:—
“O steeped in sin and void of good, dost try
To save thyself, and thy misdeeds deny?
Can sins be cancelled, or neglect made good?
Vainly on Grace Divine dost thou rely!”
The verses above cited illustrate most of the salient peculiarities of Ṣúfí thought and diction. There is the fundamental conception of God as not only Almighty and All-good, but as the sole source of Being and Beauty, and, indeed, the one Beauty and the one Being, “in Whom is submerged whatever becomes non-apparent, and by Whose light whatever is apparent is made manifest.” Closely connected with this is the symbolic language so characteristic of these, and, indeed, of nearly all mystics, to whom God is essentially “the Friend,” “the Beloved,” and “the Darling”; the ecstasy of meditating on Him “the Wine” and “the Intoxication”; His self-revelations and Occultations, “the Face” and “the Night-black Tresses,” and so forth. There is also the exaltation of the Subjective and Ideal over the Objective and Formal, and the spiritualisation of religious obligations and formulæ, which has been already noticed amongst the Isma'ílís, from whom, though otherwise strongly divergent, the Ṣúfís probably borrowed it. Last, but not least, is the broad tolerance which sees Truth in greater or less measure in all Creeds; recognises that “the Ways unto God are as the number of the souls of men”; * and, with the later Ḥáfidh, declares that “any shrine is better than self-worship.”*
Innumerable sayings and anecdotes of Abú Sa'íd are recorded by his diligent biographers. A very few examples of these must suffice. Being once asked to define Ṣúfíism, he said, “To lay aside what thou hast in thy head (such as desires and ambitions), and to give away what thou hast in thy hand, and not to flinch from whatever befalls thee.” “The veil between God and His servant,” he observed on another occasion, “is neither earth nor heaven, nor the Throne nor the Footstool: thy selfhood and illusions are the veil, and when thou removest these thou hast attained unto God.” They described to him how one holy man could walk on the water, how another could fly in the air, and how a third could in the twinkling of an eye transport himself from one city to another. “The frog can swim and the swallow skim the water,” he replied; “the crow and the fly can traverse the air, and the Devil can pass in a moment from East to West. These things are of no great account: he is a man who dwells amongst mankind, buys and sells, marries, and associates with his fellow-creatures, yet is never for a single moment forgetful of God.”
It is said that one of Abú Sa'íd's favourite verses, forming part of an Arabic poem addressed by Kuthayyir to his beloved 'Azza, was this:—
“I would answer thy voice did'st thou call me, though over my
body lay
Heavy the earth of the grave-yard, and my bones were crumbled
away”;
a verse which strongly recalls Tennyson's beautiful lines in Maud:—
“She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.”