When Earth, bewildered, shook in earthquake-throes,
   With mountain-roots He bound her borders close;
      Turkis and ruby in her rocks He stored,
   And on her green branch hung His crimson rose.

   He shapes dull seed to fair imaginings;
   Who paints with moisture as He painteth things? 
      Look! from the cloud He sheds one drop on ocean,
   As from the Father’s loins one drop He brings;—­

   And out of that He forms a peerless pearl,
   And, out of this, a cypress boy or girl;
      Utterly wotting all their innermosts,
   For all to Him is visible!  Uncurl

   Your cold coils, Snakes!  Creep forth, ye thrifty Ants! 
   Handless and strengthless He provides your wants
      Who from the ‘Is not’ planned the ‘Is to be,’
   And Life in non-existent void implants.

Sir Edwin Arnold suffers, of course, from the inevitable comparison that one cannot help making between his work and the work of Edward Fitzgerald, and certainly Fitzgerald could never have written such a line as ‘utterly wotting all their innermosts,’ but it is interesting to read almost any translation of those wonderful Oriental poets with their strange blending of philosophy and sensuousness, of simple parable or fable and obscure mystic utterance.  What we regret most in Sir Edwin Arnold’s book is his habit of writing in what really amounts to a sort of ‘pigeon English.’  When we are told that ’Lady Duffreen, the mighty Queen’s Vice-queen,’ paces among the charpoys of the ward ’no whit afraid of sitla, or of tap’; when the Mirza explains—­

         ag lejao! 
   To light the kallians for the Saheb and me,

and the attendant obeys with ‘Achcha!  Achcha!’ when we are invited to listen to ‘the Vina and the drum’ and told about ekkas, Byragis, hamals and Tamboora, all that we can say is that to such ghazals we are not prepared to say either Shamash or Afrin.  In English poetry we do not want

chatkis for the toes,
Jasams for elbow-bands, and gote and har,
Bala and mala.

This is not local colour; it is a sort of local discoloration.  It does not add anything to the vividness of the scene.  It does not bring the Orient more clearly before us.  It is simply an inconvenience to the reader and a mistake on the part of the writer.  It may be difficult for a poet to find English synonyms for Asiatic expressions, but even if it were impossible it is none the less a poet’s duty to find them.  We are sorry that a scholar and a man of culture like Sir Edwin Arnold should have been guilty of what is really an act of treason against our literature.  But for this error, his book, though not in any sense a work of genius or even of high artistic merit, would still have been of some enduring value.  As it is, Sir Edwin Arnold has translated Sa’di and some one must translate Sir Edwin Arnold.

With Sa’di in the Garden; or The Book of Love.  By Sir Edwin Arnold, M.A., K.C.I.E., Author of The Light of Asia, etc. (Trubner and Co.)