BURIED TO-DAY

Enters to-day

Another body in churchyard sod,

Another soul on the life in God; His Christ was buried-and lives away; Trust Him, and go your way.

Dinah Mulock Craik.

DEATH IN ARABIA

HE who died at Azan sends
This to comfort all his friends.

"Faithful friends! It lies, I know,
Pale and cold and white as snow,
And ye say, Abdullah's dead,'
Weeping at the foot and head.
I can see your falling tears,
I can hear your sighs and prayers,
Yet I smile, and whisper this:
I am not the thing you kiss;
Cease your tears and let it lie,
It was mine, it is not I.

"Faithful friends! be wise, and dry Straightway every weeping eye. What ye lift upon the bier Is not worth a single tear. 'Tis an empty seashell-one Out of which the pearl is gone;

DEATH IN ARABIA

The shell is broken-it lies there;
The pearl, the all, the soul is here.
'Tis an earthen jar whose lid
Allah sealed, the while it hid
A treasure of his treasury.

A mind that loved him-let it lie!
Let the shard be earth's once more,
Since the gold is in his store!

"Sweet friends! what the women lave
For the last sleep of the grave,
Is a hut which I am quitting,
Is a garment no more fitting,
Is a cage from which at last
Like a bird my soul has passed,
Love the inmate, not the room;

The wearer, not the garb; the plume
Of the eagle, not the bars

That kept him from those splendid stars.

“Allah glorious! Allah good!

Now thy world is understood!

Now the long, long wonder ends,
Yet ye weep, my erring friends,

DEATH IN ARABIA

While the man whom you call dead, In unspoken bliss instead

Lives, and loves you—lost, 'tis true,

To the light that shines for

But in a light ye cannot see
Of undisturbed felicity,

In a perfect Paradise,

And a love that never dies.

you,

"Weep awhile, if ye are fain-
Sunshine still must follow rain-
Only not at death—for death,
Now I know, is that first breath
Which our souls draw when they enter
Life that is of all life centre.

"I am gone

before your face

A moment's worth, a little space.
When ye come where I have stepped,
You will wonder why ye wept.

You will learn, by true love taught,
That here is all and there is naught.

DEATH IN ARABIA

"Be ye stout of heart and come
Bravely onward to your home.
LA IL ALLAH-ALLAH LA!
O love divine! O love alway!"

He who died at Azan gave

This to them who made his grave.

Sir Edwin Arnold.