Highest Love, where thou art thronèd, here before Thy Throne unseen, O let me pour my Melodies, my sweetest, highest yet, I ween. If well-pleasing they ascending reach Thine ear in tones of power, All their work of soul-subduing comes from Thy own soul serene. Let them hymn and let them praise thee: let them cry and supplicate: Where is he to Earth descended, Star from out thy Glory's Sheen? He his Head with thy soft Roses wreathed, and struck the charmèd String, Till drunk with Love he passed sweet playing to the Light no cloud can screen. He beclad in Garments waving here on broken Pillar leaned, Pouring Songs by which upwafted he hath left this lower Scene. Hath he now flown to Thy Bosom? Tell me, Love, who here below Didst his Soul so sweetly cherish, where still cherished hath he been?— Where the Peoples sink their Banners, where Pride lays her Signs aside, All their Caste Distinctions blending, where eternal Peace is Queen. There among the Saints, the purest, of all Zones, is he now found: Hail! All hail his Memory holy: MAULĀNĀ JELÁL-ED-DÍN! Notes. _A._ SIR WILLIAM JONES ON THE MYSTICAL POETRY OF THE PERSIANS. 1. _Epitome of the Mystical System._—The Persian (and Hindu) mystical Poets 'concur in believing that the souls of men differ infinitely in _degree_, but not at all in _kind_, from the divine Spirit, of which they are particles, and in which they will ultimately be absorbed; that the spirit of God pervades the universe, always immediately present to his work, and consequently always in substance; that he alone is perfect benevolence, perfect truth, perfect beauty; that the love of him alone is real and genuine love, while that of all other objects is absurd and illusory; that the beauties of Nature are faint resemblances, like images in a mirror, of the divine charms; that, from eternity without beginning to eternity without end, the supreme benevolence is occupied in bestowing happiness or the means of attaining it; that men can only attain it by performing their part of the _primal covenant_ between them and the Creator; that nothing has a pure absolute existence, but _mind_ or _spirit_; that material substances, as the ignorant call them, are no more than gay _pictures_ presented continually to our minds by the Sempiternal Artist; that we must beware of attachment to such phantoms, and attach ourselves exclusively to God, who truly exists in us, as we exist solely in him; that we retain, even in this forlorn state of separation from our beloved, _the idea of heavenly beauty_, and _the remembrance of our primeval vows_; that sweet music, gentle breezes, fragrant flowers, perpetually renew the primary _idea_, refresh our fading memory, and melt us with tender affections; that we must cherish those affections, and by abstracting our souls from vanity, that is, from all but God, approximate to his essence, in our final union with which will consist our supreme beatitude.