Читать книгу The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2) - Lady Isabel Burton - Страница 28

The Kasîdah.

I shall reproduce the "Kasîdah" in its entirety, with its fifteen pages of copious annotations, in the Uniform Library of Sir Richard's works which I am editing. I give the annotations in the Appendix.

It is a poem of extraordinary power on the nature and destiny of Man, anti-Christian and Pantheistic. So much wealth of Oriental learning has rarely been compressed into so small a compass.

"Let his page

Which charms the chosen spirits of the age,

Fold itself for a serener clime

Of years to come, and find its recompense

In that just expectation."

——Shelley.

"Let them laugh at me for speaking of things which they do not understand; and I must pity them while they laugh at me."——St. Augustine.