I 



1916.] Quatrains of Abu SaHd bin Abi'l Khair. 203 



27. 



They say there will be much debate on Resurrection day, 

 And stern will that dear Friend be. 

 From The Worker of good, naught but good can come. 

 Be dad : for in the end it will be well. 



28. 



Thou should'st not have shown thy face to me first. 

 So the fires of my grief might have smouldered elsewhere. 

 Now that thou hast appeared and snatched my heart from me, 

 Thou art compelled to become the thief of my heart. 



29. 



My heart can never cease to remember thee 

 Though my life pass— yet will the memory of thee remain. 

 The image of thy face has fallen on the mirror of my heart 

 An image that can never be erased. 



30. 



Old am I ; but when Love comes as a friend, 



The time of revelry and joy and blandishment returns. 



I shall throw a noose made of her long tresses 



Over the neck of my departed years, that I may bring them 



back. 



31. 



When 



And every flower I gaze on recalls Thy face. 



If I sit for a while 'neath the shade of the cypress, 



memory 



This quatrain suggests a good deal more than 

 the thought that God has created everything. 

 It embodies the mystical pantheism which saw in 

 all the forms of the universe (man himself includ- 

 ed) nothing but " the rays of His perfect beauty 

 mirrored therein." These pantheistic ideas which 

 were first preached by the great Bayazid, were 

 enthusiastically taken up by Abu Sa'id. India 

 was probably the land of their birth. It was the 

 object of the Vedanta philosophy to teach men 

 the true nature of Brahma, who pervaded the 

 universe, and of Maya, the illusion which gave to 

 all forms their appearance of reality. To the 

 Vedantist, as to the Sufi, all nature is God; the 

 world is simply a mirror in which God is reflected. 



