Know ye Allah's law is love,
Viewed from Allah's Throne above:
Be ye firm of trust, and come
Faithful onward to your home!
"La Allah illa Allah! Yea,
Mu'hîd! Restorer! Sovereign!" say!

He who died at Azan gave
This to those that made his grave.

HE AND SHE

(From "SELECTED POEMS")

"SHE is dead!" they said to him. "Come away; Kiss her! and leave her! - thy love is clay!"

They smoothed her tresses of dark brown hair;
On her forehead of marble they laid it fair:

Over her eyes, which gazed too much,
They drew the lids with a gentle touch;

With a tender touch they closed up well
The sweet thin lips that had secrets to tell;

About her brows, and her dear, pale face
They tied her veil and her marriage-lace;

And drew on her white feet her white silk shoes; -
Which were the whiter no eye could choose!

And over her bosom they crossed her hands; "Come away," they said, "God understands!"

---

And then there was Silence; - and nothing there
But the Silence- and scents of eglantere,

And jasmine, and roses, and rosemary;
For they said, "As a lady should lie, lies she!"

And they held their breath as they left the room,
With a shudder to glance at its stillness and gloom.

The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead,

He lit his lamp, and took the key,

And turn'd it! Alone again he and she!

He and she; but she would not speak,

Though he kiss'd, in the old place, the quiet cheek;

He and she; yet she would not smile,

Though he call'd her the name that was fondest erewhile;

He and she; and she did not move

To any one passionate whisper of love!

Then he said, "Cold lips! and breast without breath!
Is there no voice- no language of death,

"Dumb to the ear and still to the sense,

But to heart and to soul distinct, intense?

"See, now,

-

I listen with soul, not ear What was the secret of dying, Dear?

"Was it the infinite wonder of all,

How the spirit could let life's flower fall?

"Or was it a greater marvel to feel

The perfect calm o'er the agony steal?

"Was the miracle greatest to find how deep,
Beyond all dreams, sank downward that sleep?

"Did life roll backward its record, Dear,
And show, as they say it does, past things clear?

"And was it the innermost heart of the bliss
To find out so what a wisdom love is?

"Oh, perfect Dead! oh, Dead most dear, I hold the breath of my soul to hear;

"I listen as deep as to horrible hell,

As high as glad heaven! - and you do not tell!

"There must be pleasures in dying, Sweet, To make you so placid from head to feet!

"I would tell you, Darling, if I were dead, And 'twere your hot tears upon my brow shed.

"I would say, though the Angel of death had laid His sword on my lips to keep it unsaid.

"You should not ask, vainly, with streaming eyes, Which in Death's touch was the chiefest surprise;

"The very strangest and suddenest thing
Of all the surprises that dying must bring.”

Ah! foolish world! Oh! most kind Dead! Though he told me, who will believe it was said?

Who will believe that he heard her say,
With the soft rich voice, in the dear old way:

"The utmost wonder is this, I hear,
And see you, and love you, and kiss you, Dear;

"I can speak, now you listen with soul alone;
If your soul could see, it would all be shown

"What a strange delicious amazement is Death, To be without body and breathe without breath.

"I should laugh for joy if you did not cry;
Oh, listen! Love lasts! - Love never will die!

"I am only your Angel who was your Bride;
And I know, that though dead, I have never died.”

MATTHEW ARNOLD

99.66

MATTHEW ARNOLD, D.C.L., LL.D., son of Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby. Born at Laleham, England, December 24, 1822; died at Liverpool, April 15, 1888. Was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and Government Inspector of Schools. Author of "Poems," Essays in Criticism,” “Culture and Anarchy," "Literature and Dogma,” etc. He was fastidious and delicate in his style, with a felicitous expression not easily excelled; his writings are characterized by great ethical earnestness, and as a literary critic he has never been surpassed.

(From "CRITICAL ESSAYS")

HEINRICH HEINE

"I KNOW not if I deserve that a laurel wreath should one day be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I have loved it, has always been to me but a divine plaything. I have never attached any great value to poetical fame; and I trouble myself very little whether people praise my verses or blame them. But lay on my coffin a sword; for I was a brave soldier in the war of liberation of humanity."

Heine had his full share of love of fame, and cared quite as much as his brethren of the genus irritabile whether people praised his verses or blamed them. And he was very little of a hero. Posterity will certainly decorate his tomb with the emblem of the laurel rather than with the emblem of the sword. Still, for his contemporaries, for us, for the Europe of the present century, he is significant chiefly for the reason which he himself in the words just quoted assigns. He is significant because he was, if not preeminently a brave, yet a brilliant, a most effective soldier in the war of liberation of humanity.

To ascertain the master current in the literature of an epoch, and to distinguish this from all minor currents, is the critic's highest function; in discharging it he shows how far he possesses the most indispensable quality of his office, — justness of spirit. The living writer who has done most to make England acquainted with German authors, a man of genius, but to whom precisely this one quality of justness of spirit is perhaps wanting,

- I mean Mr. Carlyle, seems to me in the result of his labors on German literature to afford a proof how very necessary to the critic this quality is. Mr. Carlyle has spoken admirably of Goethe; but then Goethe stands before all men's eyes, the manifest center of German literature; and from this central source many rivers flow. Which of these rivers is the main stream? which of the courses of spirit which we see active in Goethe, is the course which will most influence the future, and attract and be continued by the most powerful of Goethe's successors? - that is the question. Mr. Carlyle attaches, it seems to me, far too much importance to the romantic school of Germany, Tieck, Novalis, Jean Paul Richter, and gives to these writers, really gifted as two, at any rate, of them are, an undue prominence. These writers, and others with aims and a general tendency the same as theirs, are not the real inheritors and continuators of Goethe's power; the current of their activity is not the main current of German literature after Goethe. Far more in Heine's works flows this main current; Heine, far more than Tieck or Jean Paul Richter, is the continuator of that which, in Goethe's varied activity, is the most powerful and vital; on Heine, of all German authors who survived Goethe, incomparably the largest portion of Goethe's mantle fell. I do not forget that when Mr. Carlyle was dealing with German literature, Heine, though he was clearly risen above the horizon, had not shone forth with all his strength; I do not forget, too, that after ten or twenty years many things may come out plain before the critic which before were hard to be discerned by him; and assuredly no one would dream of imputing it as a fault to Mr. Carlyle that twenty years ago he mistook the central current in German literature, overlooked the rising Heine, and attached undue importance to that romantic school which Heine was to destroy; one may rather note it as a misfortune, sent perhaps as a delicate chastisement to a critic, who, man of genius as he is, and no one recognizes his genius more admirably than I do, - has, for the functions of the critic, a little too much of the selfwill and eccentricity of a genuine son of Great Britain.

Heine is noteworthy, because he is the most important German successor and continuator of Goethe in Goethe's most important line of activity. And which of Goethe's lines of activity