The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
one of His decrees, because we prayed for it; that He was a God of big universal love, but so far off, as to be far above anything we can understand. These were the utmost extent of his own Agnostic fits.
Almost contemporary with these sentiments, I find the following verses:—
1.
"Bright imaged in the glassy lake below,
Crisped by the zephyrs' nimble run,
I saw two sister stars appear.
I looked above, there shone but one;
Then fled the zephyrs, and my eye
The sole reflection could descry.
2.
"Then rising high, the crescent skiff
Thro' the deep azure rolled its way;
On earth a misty shadow lay,
While all of heaven was bright and gay.
Then waxed the night cloud thin and rare,
And died within its home, the air.
3.
"Thus senses that improve the soul
To deadliest error oft give birth;
Dust-born, they grovel and apply
To highest heaven low rubs of earth,
Fell fatal masters where they sway,
Obedient slaves when taught t' obey.
4.
"Nor let th' immortal "I" depend
On Reason, blind and faithless guide,
Who knowing nothing knoweth all
Of mortal folly—human pride;
Not thus may truth be wooed and won—
A reasonable creed is none. 5. "Who then thy falt'ring steps may lead O'er the wild waste of doubt and fear, Where sense and reason shed no ray? The marks and glooms what light may clear? Shall nature tread a law-girt course, While man walks earth a living corpse? 6. "Ah, no! there is a heavenly guide That leads, directs this fragile clay; We call it spirit, soul, and life, Let mortal call it as he may; Man, go not far, seek not elsewhere; Search that within—Truth dwelleth there."
He was always in one of the two extremes, meaning All or Nothing. It is what we Catholics call "resisting of Divine grace;" it is what Agnostics would call "resisting a temptation," or the correct shibboleth, I believe, is "upholding his integrity," i.e. disbelieving in God and another world, which he never did at any time of his life.
1. He was so broad and muscular that he did not look more than five feet nine—but he really was two inches taller, and the one complaint of his life was not to be able to grow another inch to make six feet.
2. "The Tayyárah, or 'Flying Caravan,' is lightly laden, and travels by forced marches."
3. "The Rakb is a dromedary-caravan, in which each person carries only his saddle-bags. It usually descends by the road called El Khabt, and makes Mecca on the fifth day."
4. "By the term 'fatted ass' the intellectual lady alluded to her royal husband."
5. N.B.—I have still got some of Richard's bottles of this holy water, if any one would wish to analyze it.—I. B.
6. N.B.—I found in later years he had recently copied into this part of his journal, from some paper, "The Meditations of a Hindu Prince and Sceptic," by the author of "The Old Pindaree"—
"All the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod,
Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God?
Westward across the ocean, and Northward ayont the snow,
Do they all stand gazing, as ever? and what do the wisest know?
"Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm,
Like the wild bees heard in the treetops, or the gusts of a gathering storm;
In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen,
Yet we all say, 'Whence is the message? and what may the wonders mean?'
"Shall I list to the word of the English, who came from the uttermost sea?
'The secret, hath it been told you? and what is your message to me?'
It is nought but the wide-world story how the earth and the heavens began;
How the gods are glad and angry, and a Deity once a man.
"I had thought, 'Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell,
Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell,
They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown main:'
Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain.
"Is life, then, a dream and delusion? and where shall the dreamer awake?
Is the world seen like shadows on water? and what if the mirror break?
Shall it pass, as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered and gone,
From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and lone?
"Is there nought in the heavens above, whence the hail and the levin are hurled,
But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world?—
The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep
With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and the voices of women who weep."
7. I have only given the barest outlines of what took place, referring my readers to the original, because, as there were between fifty and fifty-five mosques, besides other places, and various interesting ceremonies to be performed in each one, there would be no room for anything else; and the same may be said of El Medinah.—I. B.
8. On the Dwárká, before he had time to go down to the cabin and change his clothes, one of his English brother officers, who was on board the ship, gave him a sly kick, and said, "Get out of the way, you dirty nigger." He often told me how he longed to hit him, but did not dare to betray himself. He was also part of the way in the Red Sea with my cousin William Strickland, a priest, and he used to tease him by sitting opposite to him, reciting his Korán out loud, while William was saying his breviary also out loud. At last one day Strickland got up, saying, "Oh, my God, I can't stand this much more," and afterwards these two became great friends.—I. B.
9. This is absolutely untrue. Since Richard's death, two Englishmen, out of jealousy, have made this remark—one only knew Syrian Christian Arabic; the other, the dialect of Suez.
10. The false dawn.
11. The Demon of the Desert.