—Lives Lived in obedience to the inner law Which cannot alter. [1] The Eternal Gardener: so the old inscription saying:— locatus est in Homo damnatus est in horto humatus est in renatus est in NOTE II A few words concerning the Kasîdah itself. Our Hâjî begins with a _mise-en-scène_; and takes leave of the Caravan setting out for Mecca. He sees the “Wolf’s tail” (_Dum-i-gurg_), the {Greek: lykaugés}, or wolf-gleam, the Diluculum, the Zodiacal dawn-light, the first faint brushes of white radiating from below the Eastern horizon. It is accompanied by the morning-breath (_Dam-i-Subh_), the current of air, almost imperceptible except by the increase of cold, which Moslem physiologists suppose to be the early prayer offered by Nature to the First Cause. The Ghoul-i-Biyâbân (Desert-Demon) is evidently the personification of man’s fears and of the dangers that surround travelling in the wilds. The “wold-where-none-save-He (Allah)-can-dwell” is a great and terrible wilderness (_Dasht-i-lâ-siwâ Hu_); and Allah’s Holy Hill is Arafât, near Mecca, which the Caravan reaches after passing through Medina. The first section ends with a sore lament that the “meetings of this world take place upon the highway of Separation”; and the original also has:— The chill of sorrow numbs my thought: methinks I hear the passing knell; As dies across yon thin blue line the tinkling of the Camel-bell. The next section quotes the various aspects under which Life appeared to the wise and foolish teachers of humanity. First comes Hafiz, whose well-known lines are quoted beginning with Shab-i-târîk o bîm-i-mauj, etc. Hûr is the plural of Ahwar, in full Ahwar el-Ayn, a maid whose eyes are intensely white where they should be white, and black elsewhere: hence our silly “Houries.” Follows Umar-i-Khayyâm, who spiritualized Tasawwof, or Sooffeism, even as the Soofis (Gnostics) spiritualized Moslem Puritanism. The verses alluded to are:— You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse I made a second marriage in my house, Divorced old barren Reason from my bed And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse. (St. 60, Mr. Fitzgerald’s translation.)