The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala
Baerlein, Henry
English
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Below is a summary of The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala
The Wisdom of the East Series
Edited by
L. CRANMER-BYNG
Dr. S. A. KAPADIA
THE DIWAN OF ABU'L-ALA
By
HENRY BAERLEIN
Author of "In Pursuit of Dulcinea," "The Shade of the Balkans,"
"Yrivand," etc.
The stars have sunk from the celestial bowers,
And in the garden have been turned to flowers.
MUTAMID, _in captivity_.
Second Edition
LONDON: John Murray, 1909.
DEDICATION
TO DR. E. J. DILLON
Now the book is finished, so far as I shall finish it. There is,
my friend, but this one page to write. And, more than probably,
this is the page of all the book that I shall never wish to blot.
Increasing wisdom or, at any rate, experience will make me frown,
I promise you, some time or other at a large proportion of the
pages of this volume. But when I look upon your name I hear a
troop of memories, and in their singing is my happiness.
When you receive this book, presuming that the Russian Censor
does not shield you from it, I have some idea what you will do.
The string, of course, must not be cut, and you will seriously
set about the disentangling of it. One hand assists by holding
up, now near the nose now farther off, your glasses; the other
hand pecks at the string. After, say, twenty minutes there will
enter the admirable Miss Fox--oh! the tea she used to make for us
when we were freezing on the mountains of Bulgaria, what time our
Chicagoan millionaire was ruffled and Milyukov, the adventurous
professor, standing now not far from Russia's helm, would always
drive ahead of us and say, with princely gesture, that if we
suffered from the dust it was advisable that he should be the one
to meet the fury of the local lions. But do not let us lose the
scent: Miss Fox, that woman of resource, will cut the string. And
later on, while to her you are dictating things political and
while your other secretary is discoursing music, mournful Russian
music, then with many wrinkles on your brow you will hold the
book at arm's length.
"The Serbonian Bog," says Miss Fox, repeating the last lines of
the dictation.
Your face is held sideways with what is called, I believe, a
quizzical expression.
"Morocco," says she, "viewed from the banks of the Seine, is
becoming more and more like the Serbonian Bog." Then she waits,
discreet as always, while you think. Miss Fox, his thoughts are
on the Adriatic!
There his boat, eleven years ago, was sailing underneath a net of
stars and he was talking to a fellow-traveller. They had been
joined at first by common suffering,--and how shall mortals find
a stronger link? On board that boat there was an elderly
American, the widow of a senator's brother-in-law, whose mission
was, she took it, to convert those two. What specially attracted
her to them was not, perhaps, that they excelled the other
passengers in luridness, but that they had the privilege of
understanding, more or less, her language.
"Feci quod potui," said Dr. Dillon, "faciant meliora potentes."
She said, and let us hope with truth, that recently a Chinaman,
another object of her ministrations, had addressed her as "Your
honour, the foreign devil." And this caused her to discuss the
details of our final journey--in the meantime we have taken many
others of a more delightful sort--and she assured us that we
should be joined by Chinamen and all those Easterners. She had
extremely little hope for any of them, and Abu'l-Ala, the Syrian
poet, whom Dr. Dillon had been putting into English prose,--
Abu'l-Ala she steadily refused to read. Nor did the prospect of
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