’Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth,
And tolls its perfume on the passing air,
Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth

                                A call to prayer;—­

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column
Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,
But to that fane, most catholic and solemn,

                                Which God hath planned: 

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,
Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply;
Its choir, the winds and waves, its organ, thunder,

                                Its dome, the sky.

There, amid solitude and shade, I wander
Through the green aisles, and, stretched upon the sod,
Awed by the silence, reverently ponder

                                The ways of God.

[24] “In the name of God” is part of the formula employed by
pious Muslims in their acts of worship, and on entering
upon any enterprise of danger or
uncertainty—­bi’smi’llahi ar-rahman ar-rahimi, “In the
name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!” These
words are usually placed at the beginning of Muhammedan
books, secular as well as religions; and they form part
of the Muslim Confession of Faith, used in the last
extremity:  “In the name of God, the Merciful, the
Compassionate!  There is no strength nor any power save
in God, the High, the Mighty.  To God we belong, and
verily to him we return!”

* * * * *

When Saadi composed his Gulistan, in 1278, he was between eighty and ninety years of age, with his great mind still vigorous as ever; and he lived many years after, beloved and revered by the poor, whose necessities he relieved, and honoured and esteemed by the noble and the learned, who frequently visited the venerable solitary, to gather and treasure up the pearls of wisdom which dropped from his eloquent tongue.  Like other poets of lofty genius, he possessed a firm assurance of the immortality of his fame.  “A rose,” says he, “may continue to bloom for five or six days, but this Rose-Garden will flourish for ever”; and again:  “These verses and recitals of mine will endure after every particle of my dust has been dispersed.”  Six centuries have passed away since the gifted sage penned his Gulistan, and his fame has not only continued in his own land and throughout the East generally, but has spread into all European countries, and across the Atlantic, where long after the days of Saadi “still stood the forests primeval.”

ORIENTAL WIT AND HUMOUR.

  Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
  And Laughter shaking both his sides.—­L’ Allegro.

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