{"collection":"Islam","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/kas/kas10.htm","path":"isl/kas/kas10.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/isl/kas/kas10.htm","text":"THERE is no Heav'en, there is no Hell;\n these be the dreams of baby minds;\n Tools of the wily Fetisheer,\n to 'fright the fools his cunning blinds.\nLearn from the mighty Spi'rits of old\n to set thy foot on Heav'en and Hell;\n In Life to find thy hell and heav'en\n as thou abuse or use it well.\nSo deemed the doughty Jew who dared\n by studied silence low to lay\n Orcus and Hades, lands of shades,\n the gloomy night of human day.\nHard to the heart is final death:\n fain would an Ens not end in Nil;\n Love made the senti'ment kindly good:\n the Priest perverted all to ill.\n{p. 51}\nWhile Reason sternly bids us die,\n Love longs for life beyond the grave:\n Our hearts, affections, hopes and fears\n for life-to-be shall ever crave.\nHence came the despot's darling dream,\n a Church to rule and sway the State;\n Hence sprang the train of countless griefs\n in priestly sway and rule innate.\nFor future Life who dares reply?\n No witness at the bar have we;\n Save what the brother Potsherd tells,--\n old tales and novel jugglery.\nWho e'er return'd to teach the Truth.,\n the things of Heaven and Hell to limn?\n And all we hear is only fit\n for grandam-talk and nursery-hymn.\n\"Have mercy, man!\" the Z\u00e2hid cries,\n \"of our best visions rob us not!\n \"Mankind a future life must have\n to balance life's unequal lot.\"\n{p. 52}\n\"Nay,\" quoth the Magian, \"'tis not so;\n I draw my wine for one and all,\n \"A cup for this, a score for that,\n e'en as his measure's great or small:\n\"Who drinks one bowl hath scant delight;\n to poorest passion he was born;\n \"Who drains the score must e'er expect\n to rue the headache of the morn.\"\nSafely he jogs along the way\n which 'Golden Mean' the sages call;\n Who scales the brow of frowning Alp\n must face full many a slip and fall.\nHere \u00e8xtremes meet, anointed Kings\n whose crown\u00e8d heads uneasy lie,\n Whose cup of joy contains no more\n than tramps that on the dunghill die.\nTo fate-doomed Sinner born and bred\n for dangling from the gallows-tree;\n To Saint who spends his holy days\n in rapt'urous hope his God to see;\n{p. 53}\nTo all that breathe our upper air\n the hands of Dest'iny ever deal,\n In fixed and equal parts, their shares\n of joy and sorrow, woe and weal.\nHow comes it, then, our span of days\n in hunting wealth and fame we spend\n Why strive we (and all humans strive)\n for vain and visionary end?\nReply: mankind obeys a law\n that bids him labour, struggle, strain;\n The Sage well knowing its unworth,\n the Fool a-dreaming foolish gain.\nAnd who, mid e'en the Fools, but feels\n that half the joy is in the race\n For wealth and fame and place, nor sighs\n when comes success to crown the chase?\nAgain: in Hind, Ch\u00een, Franguest\u00e2n\n that accident of birth befell.\n Without our choice, our will, our voice:\n Faith is an accident as well.\n{p. 54}\nWhat to the Hindu saith the Frank:\n \"Denier of the Laws divine!\n \"However godly-good thy Life,\n Hell is the home for thee and thine.\"\n\"Go strain the draught before 'tis drunk,\n and learn that breathing every breath,\n \"With every step, with every gest,\n something of life thou do'est to death.\"\nReplies the Hindu: \"Wend thy way\n for foul and foolish Mlenchhas fit;\n \"Your Pariah-par'adise woo and win;\n at such dog-Heav'en I laugh and spit.\n\"Cannibals of the Holy Cow!\n who make your rav'ening maws the grave\n \"Of Things with self-same right to live;--\n what Fiend the filthy license gave?\"\nWhat to the Moslem cries the Frank?\n \"A polygamic Theist thou!\n From an imposter-Prophet turn;\n Thy stubborn head to Jesus bow.\"\n{p. 55}\nRejoins the Moslem: \"Allah's one\n tho' with four Moslemahs I wive,\n \"One-wife-men ye and (damn\u00e8d race!)\n you split your God to Three and Five.\"\nThe Buddhist to Confucius thus:\n \"Like dogs ye live, like dogs ye die;\n \"Content ye rest with wretched earth;\n God, judgment, Hell ye fain defy.\"\nRetorts the Tartar: \"Shall I lend\n mine only ready-money 'now,'\n \"For vain usurious 'Then' like thine,\n avaunt, a triple idiot Thou!\"\nWith this poor life, with this mean world\n I fain complete what in me lies;\n \"I strive to perfect this my me;\n my sole ambition's to be wise.\"\nWhen doctors differ who decides\n amid the milliard-beaded throng?\n Who save the madman dares to cry:\n \"'Tis I am right, you all are wrong?\"\n{p. 56}\n\"You all are right, you all are wrong,\"\n we hear the careless Soofi say,\n \"For each believes his glimm'ering lamp\n to be the gorgeous light of day.\"\n\"Thy faith why false, my faith why true?\n 'tis all the work of Thine and Mine,\n \"The fond and foolish love of self\n that makes the Mine excel the Thine.\"\nCease then to mumble rotten bones;\n and strive to clothe with flesh and blood\n The skel'eton; and to shape a Form\n that all shall hail as fair and good.\n\"For gen'erous youth,\" an Arab saith,\n \"Jahim's[1] the only genial state;\n \"Give us the fire but not the shame\n with the sad, sorry blest to mate.\"\nAnd if your Heav'en and Hell be true,\n and Fate that forced me to be born\n Force me to Heav'en or Hell--I go,\n and hold Fate's insolence in scorn.\n[1. Jehannum, Gehenna, Hell.]\n{p. 57}\nI want not this, I want not that,\n already sick of Me and Thee;\n And if we're both transform'd and changed,\n what then becomes of Thee and Me?\nEnough to think such things may be:\n to say they are not or they are\n Were folly: leave -them all to Fate,\n nor wage on shadows useless war.\nDo what thy manhood bids thee do,\n from none but self expect applause;\n He noblest lives and noblest dies\n who makes and keeps his self-made laws.\nAll other Life is living Death,\n a world where none but Phantoms dwell,\n A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice,\n a tinkling of the camel-bell.\n{p. 58}","title":"The Kas\u00eedah of H\u00e2j\u00ee Abd\u00fb El-Yezd\u00ee: VIII","type":"page"}