The chill of sorrow numbs my thought:
methinks I hear the passing knell;
As dies across yon thin blue line
the tinkling of the Camel-bell.

The next section quotes the various aspects under which Life
appeared to the wise and foolish teachers of humanity. First
comes Hafiz, whose well-known lines are quoted beginning with
Shab-i-tarik o bim-i-mauj, etc. Hur is the plural of Ahwar, in
full Ahwar el-Ayn, a maid whose eyes are intensely white where
they should be white, and black elsewhere: hence our silly
"Houries." Follows Umar-i-Khayyam, who spiritualized Tasawwof, or
Sooffeism, even as the Soofis (Gnostics) spiritualized Moslem
Puritanism. The verses alluded to are:--

You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse
I made a second marriage in my house,
Divorced old barren Reason from my bed
And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse.
(St. 60, Mr. Fitzgerald's translation.)

Here "Wine" is used in its mystic sense of entranced Love for the
Soul of Souls. Umar was hated and feared because he spoke boldly
when his brethren the Soofis dealt in innuendoes. A third
quotation has been trained into a likeness of the "Hymn of Life,"
despite the commonplace and the _navrante vulgarite_ which
characterize the pseudo-Schiller-Anglo-American School. The same
has been done to the words of Isa (Jesus); for the author, who is
well-read in the Ingil (Evangel), evidently intended the
allusion. Mansur el-Hallaj (the Cotton-Cleaner) was stoned for