The human life and spirit to usurp. The king who does the rose garden restore Is but the light and health that clears man’s soul. Anger and passion both give way to him, And God’s own light at last pours blessing down. This king brings help to heart and intellect, And takes possession of the whole domain. He frees the spirit from the charge of sense, And widens out the prospect of the soul; Then heart and spirit in a kiss unite, The bridal of the Rose and Nightingale. LX THE CLOSE OF THE BOOK Thank God, these pages, numbered to the full, Are pleasant as the petals of a Rose; Where genius is as the Nightingale, And plucks them ardently from off the flower. ’Tis genius blent the sweets of Gulistan, Tinting narcissus’ cheeks with fresher hue. Each verse is like a gayly-painted rose, And Bulbul is the guardian of the grove. The letters like to cedars stand in line, The lines run o’er the page like rivulets. The words like rank and file their order take, The sense is as the diamond in the mine. And thus the poet has prepared for you A feast of tenderness, a dainty feast, A bosom book of the sublimest lore, Which all the world will welcome with delight. The book towers up like some tall monument, And every verse of it is Eden’s door. And I have put a meaning under it, Which is the Gulistan of its fair words. It sprang from out the well of my pure wit, My genius is enthroned on its renown, ’Tis I who clothed the legend in these words, The language and the meaning both are mine, And in this legend there is naught of guile, My taper’s light no _ignis fatuus_, And he who sees the symbol will esteem, The book from title-page to colophon. I borrowed no man’s phrases and I trod No path that had been trodden hitherto. Forth from the portal of my intellect There streamed the words of evil and of good. And many a lovely lay have I composed From the sad music of the Nightingale. So that this book, so fascinating fair, Will by the fair ever be beloved. I hope that God the volume will protect, And keep it safe from misadventures twain. First from a critic ignorant and dull, Who like a mule the poet tramples down, A critic without intellect and sense, Who cannot see the meaning of the words, But twists the sense of every graceful line, And does not hear the music in the verse. One point he dwells on, to another blind, And mixes up the poetry and prose. Presumes himself to boast poetic fire, And to set right a hundred lines of mine. Then from the writer who, like one bewitched, Does naught but blot each blemish in the book. He scores the book with blots as with a cloak, And all its beauties in concealment keeps. He sticks his mark where is no need of it, And blunders every time he would correct;