Texts of Islam

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî: II

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This is a Victorian philosophical poem — likely by Richard Francis Burton — written in a meditative lyric tradition, set against a bleak seascape that frames questions about human existence, mortality, and the afterlife. The poem surveys a series of answers to those questions, each put in the mouth of a different tradition: the Persian poets Hafiz and Omar Khayyam with their wine-and-pleasure hedonism, the Sufi mystic claiming identity with God (referencing the executed Mansur al-Hallaj), Jesus promising an invisible paradise, and the "Zahid" (conventionally pious believer) trudging confidently toward a heaven he cannot actually know. The speaker engages each position with sharp skepticism, finding the hedonists shallow, the mystics reckless, the orthodox presumptuous, and the Christian promise frustratingly vague. A distinctive thread is the poem's cosmopolitan range — it moves fluently between Islamic, Persian, Christian, and Sufi thought, treating them as equally valid and equally insufficient answers to the same existential problem. The poem closes not with any resolution but with a rebuke: humanity, brief and tiny against an ancient and vast world, has no business treating itself as the measure of all things. It will appeal to readers interested in Victorian skepticism, comparative religion, and the influence of Eastern literature on nineteenth-century English poetry.

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî: II

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