| Things to Live For |
Chapter 24 |
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These truths are put very clearly in some lines of Sir Edwin Arnold’s on the death of Abdallah:–
“Faithful friends! It lies, I know,
Pale and white and cold as snow
And ye say, “Abdallah’s dead!”
Weeping at the feet and head,
I can see your falling tears,
I can hear your sighs and prayers;
Yet I smile and whisper this,–
“I am not the thing you kiss;
Cease your tears, and let it lie;
It was mine, it is not I.”
“Sweet friends! What the women have
For its last bed of the grave,
Is a hut which I am quitting,
Is a garment no more fitting,
Is a cage from which, at last,
Like a hawk my end has passed.
“Love the inmate, not the room,–
The wearer, not the garb,–the plume
Of the falcon, not the bars
Which kept him from these splendid stars.
“Loving friends! Be wise, and dry
Straightway every weeping eye;
What ye lift upon the bier
Is not worth a wistful tear.
‘Tis an empty seashell,–one
Out of which the pearl is gone;
The shell is broken, it lies there,
The pearl, the all, the soul, is here.
‘Tis an earthen jar whose lid
Allah sealed, the while it hid
That treasure of his treasury
A mind that loved him; let it lie.
Let the shard be earth’s once more,
Since the gold shines in his store!”
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