Akbars Dream
By Alfred Lord Tennyson
AN INSCRIPTION BY ABUL FAZL FOR A TEMPLE IN KASHMIR (Blochmann xxxii.)
O God in every temple I see people that see thee,
and in every language I hear spoken, people praise thee.
Polytheism and Islm feel after thee.
Each religion says, Thou art one, without equal.
If it be a mosque people murmur the holy prayer,
and if it be a Christian Church, people ring the bell from love to Thee.
Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister,
and sometimes the mosque.
But it is thou whom I search from temple to temple.
Thy elect have no dealings with either heresy or orthodoxy;
for neither of them stands behind the screen of thy truth.
Heresy to the heretic, and religion to the orthodox,
But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume seller.
AKBAR and ABUL FAZL before the palace
at Futehpur-Sikri at night.
Light of the nations askd his Chronicler
Of Akbar what has darkend thee to-night?
Then, after one quick glance upon the stars,
And turning slowly toward him, Akbar said
The shadow of a dreaman idle one
It may be. Still I raised my heart to heaven,
I prayd against the dream. To pray, to do
To pray, to do according to the prayer,
Are, both, to worship AlIa, but the prayers,
That have no successor in deed, are faint
And pale in AlIas eyes, fair mothers they
Dying in childbirth of dead sons. I vowd
Whateer my dreams, I still would do the right
Thro all the vast dominion which a sword,
That only conquers men to conquer peace,
Has won me. AlIa be my guide!
But come,
My noble friend, my faithful counselIor,
Sit by my side. While thou art one with me,
I seem no longer like a lonely man
In the kings garden, gathering here and there
From each fair plant the blossom choicest-grown
To wreathe a crown not only for the king
But in due time for every Mussulmn,
Brahmin, and Buddhist, Christian, and Parsee,
Thro all the warring world of Hindustan.
WeIl spake thy brother in his hymn to heaven
Thy glory baffles wisdom. AIl the tracks
Of science making toward Thy Perfectness
Are blinding desert sand; we scarce can spell
The Alif of Thine Alphabet of Love.
He knows Himself, men nor themselves nor Him,
For every splinterd fraction of a sect
Will clamour I am on the Perfect Way,
All else is to perdition.
Shall the rose
Cry to the lotus No flower thou? the palm
Call to the cypress I alone am fair?
The mango spurn the melon at his foot?
Mine is the one fruit Alla made for man.
Look how the living pulse of Alla beats
Thro all His world. If every single star
Should shriek its claim I only am in heaven
Why that were such sphere-music as the Greek
Had hardly dreamd of. There is light in all,
And light, with more or less of shade, in all
Man-modes of worship; but our Ulama,
Who sitting on green sofas contemplate
The torment of the damnd already, these
Are like wild brutes new-cagedthe narrower
The cage, the more their fury. Me they front
With sullen brows. What wonder! I decreed
That even the dog was clean, that men may taste
Swine-flesh, drink wine; they know too that wheneer
In our free Hall, where each philosophy
And mood of faith may hold its own, they blurt
Their furious formalisms, I but hear
The clash of tides that meet in narrow seas,
Not the Great Voice not the true Deep.
To drive
A people from their ancient fold of Faith,
And wall them up perforce in mineunwise,
Unkinglike;and the morning of my reign
Was reddend by that cloud of shame when I . . .
I hate the rancour of their castes and creeds,
I let men worship as they will, I reap
No revenue from the field of unbelief.
I cull from every faith and race the best
And bravest soul for counsellor and friend.
I loathe the very name of infidel.
I stagger at the Korn and the sword.
I shudder at the Christian and the stake;
Yet Alla, says their sacred book, is Love,
And when the Goan Padre quoting Him,
Issa Ben Mariam, his own prophet, cried
Love one another little ones and bless
Whom? even your persecutors! there methought
The cloud was rifted by a purer gleam
Than glances from the sun of our Islm.
And thou rememberest what a fury shook
Those pillars of a moulderd faith, when he,
That other, prophet of their fall, proclaimed
His Master as the Sun of Righteousness,
Yea, Alla here on earth, who caught and held
His people by the bridle-rein of Truth.
What art thou saying? And was not Alla calld
In old Irn the Sun of Love? and Love
The net of truth?
A voice from old Irn!
Nay, but I know ithis, the hoary Sheik,
On whom the women shrieking Atheist flung
Filth from the roof, the mystic melodist
Who all but lost himself in Alla, him
Ab Sad
a sun but dimly seen
Here, till the mortal morning mists of earth
Fade in the noon of heaven, when creed and race
Shall bear false witness, each of each, no more,
But find their limits by that larger light,
And overstep them, moving easily
Thro after-ages in the love of Truth,
The truth of Love.
The sun, the sun! they rail
At me the Zoroastrian. Let the Sun,
Who heats our earth to yield us grain and fruit,
And laughs upon thy field as well as mine,
And warms the blood of Shiah and Sunnee,
Symbol the Eternal! Yea and may not kings
Express Him also by their warmth of love
For all they ruleby equal law for all?
By deeds a light to men?
But no such light
Glanced from our Presence on the face of one,
Who breaking in upon us yestermorn,
With all the Hells a-glare in either eye,
Yelld hast thou brought us down a new Korn
From heaven? art thou the Prophet? canst thou work
Miracles? and the wild horse, anger, plunged
To fling me, and faild. Miracles! no, not I
Nor he, nor any. I can but lift the torch
Of Reason in the dusky cave of Life,
And gaze on this great miracle, the World,
Adoring That who made, and makes, and is,
And is not, what I gaze onall else Form,
Ritual, varying with the tribes of men.
Ay but, my friend, thou knowest I hold that forms
Are needful: only let the hand that rules,
With politic care, with utter gentleness,
Mould them for all his people.
And what are forms?
Fair garments, plain or rich, and fitting close
Or flying looselier, warmd but by the heart
Within them, moved but by the living limb,
And cast aside, when old, for newer,Forms!
The Spiritual in Natures market-place
The silent Alphabet-of-heaven-in-man
Made vocalbanners blazoning a Power
That is not seen and rules from far away
A silken cord let down from Paradise,
When fine Philosophies would fail, to draw
The crowd from wallowing in the mire of earth,
And all the more, when these behold their Lord,
Who shaped the forms, obey them, and himself
Here on this bank in some way live the life
Beyond the bridge, and serve that Infinite
Within us, as without, that All-in-all,
And over all, the never-changing One
And ever-changing Many, in praise of Whom
The Christian bell, the cry from off the mosque,
And vaguer voices of Polytheism
Make but one music, harmonising, Pray.
There westwardunder yon slow-falling star,
The Christians own a Spiritual Head;
And following thy true counsel, by thine aid,
Myself am such in our Islam, for no
Mirage of glory, but for power to fuse
My myriads into union under one;
To hunt the tiger of oppression out
From office; and to spread the Divine Faith
Like calming oil on all their stormy creeds,
And fill the hollows between wave and wave;
To nurse my children on the milk of Truth,
And alchemise old hates into the gold
Of Love, and make it current; and beat back
The menacing poison of intolerant priests,
Those cobras ever setting up their hoods
One Alla! one Kalifa!
Stillat times
A doubt, a fear,and yester afternoon
I dreamd,thou knowest how deep a well of love
My heart is for my son, Saleem, mine heir,
And yet so wild and wayward that my dream
He glares askance at thee as one of those
Who mix the wines of heresy in the cup
Of counselsoI pray thee
Well, I dreamd
That stone by stone I reard a sacred fane,
A temple, neither Pagod, Mosque, nor Church,
But loftier, simpler, always open-doord
To every breath from heaven, and Truth and Peace
And Love and Justice came and dwelt therein;
But while we stood rejoicing, I and thou,
I heard a mocking laugh the new Korn!
And on the sudden, and with a cry Saleem
Thou, thouI saw thee fall before me, and then
Me too the black-wingd Azrael overcame,
But Death had ears and eyes; I watchd my son,
And those that followd, loosen, stone from stone,
All my fair work; and from the ruin arose
The shriek and curse of trampled millions, even
As in the time before; but while I groand,
From out the sunset pourd an alien race,
Who fitted stone to stone again, and Truth,
Peace, Love and Justice came and dwelt therein,
Nor in the field without were seen or heard
Fires of Sttee, nor wail of baby-wife,
Or Indian widow; and in sleep I said
All praise to Alla by whatever hands
My mission be accomplishd! but we hear
Music: our palace is awake,and morn
Has lifted the dark eyelash of the Night
From off the rosy cheek of waking Day.
Our hymn to the sun. They sing it. Let us go.
HYMN
I
Once again thou flamest heavenward, once again we see thee rise.
Every morning is thy birthday gladdening human hearts and eyes.
Every morning here we greet it, bowing lowly down before thee,
Thee the God1ike, thee the changeless in thine ever-changing skies.
II
Shadow-maker, shadow-slayer, arrowing light from clime to clime,
Hear thy myriad laureates hail thee monarch in their woodland rhyme.
Warble bird, and open flower, and, men below the dome of azure
Kneel adoring Him the Timeless in the flame that measures Time!