Bird Parliament · 13 of 20

The Birds Debate

And after these came others—arguing, Enquiring and excusing—some one Thing, And some another—endless to repeat, But, in the Main, Sloth, Folly, or Deceit. Their Souls were to the vulgar Figure cast Of earthly Victual not of Heavenly Fast. At last one smaller Bird, of a rare kind, Of modest Plume and unpresumptuous Mind, Whisper’d ‘O Tajidar, we know indeed How Thou both knowest, and would’st help our Need; For thou art wise and holy, and hast been Behind the Veil, and there The Presence seen. But we are weak and vain, with little care Beyond our yearly Nests and daily Fare— How should we reach the Mountain? and if there How get so great a Prince to hear our Prayer? For there, you say, dwells The Symurgh alone In Glory, like Sulayman on his Throne, And we but Pismires at his feet: can He Such puny Creatures stoop to hear, or see; Or hearing, seeing, own us—unakin As He to Folly, Woe, and Death, and Sin?’—

To whom the Tajidar, whose Voice for those Bewilder’d ones to full Compassion rose ‘O lost so long in exile, you disclaim The very Fount of Being whence you came, Cannot be parted from, and, will or no, Whether for Good or Evil must re-flow! For look—the Shadows into which the Light Of his pure Essence down by infinite Gradation dwindles, which at random play Through Space in Shape indefinite—one Ray Of his Creative Will into defined Creation quickens: We that swim the Wind, And they the Flood below, and Man and Beast That walk between, from Lion to the least Pismire that creeps along Sulayman’s Wall— Yea, that in which they swim, fly, walk, and crawl— However near the Fountain Light, or far Removed, yet His authentic Shadows are; Dead Matter’s Self but the dark Residue Exterminating Glory dwindles to. A Mystery too fearful in the Crowd To utter—scarcely to Thyself aloud— But when in solitary Watch and Prayer Consider’d: and religiously beware Lest Thou the Copy with the Type confound; And Deity, with Deity indrown’d,— For as pure Water into purer Wine Incorporating shall itself reline While the dull Drug lies half-resolved below, With Him and with his Shadows is it so: The baser Forms, to whatsoever Change Subject, still vary through their lower Range: To which the higher even shall decay, That, letting ooze their better Part away For Things of Sense and Matter, in the End Shall merge into the Clay to which they tend. Unlike to him, who straining through the Bond Of outward Being for a Life beyond, While the gross Worldling to his Centre clings, That draws him deeper in, exulting springs To merge him in the central Soul of Things. And shall not he pass home with other Zest Who, with full Knowledge, yearns for such a Rest, Than he, who with his better self at strife, Drags on the weary Exile call’d This Life?— One, like a child with outstretcht Arms and Face Upturn’d, anticipates his Sire’s Embrace; The other crouching like a guilty Slave Till flogg’d to Punishment across the Grave. And, knowing that His glory ill can bear The unpurged Eye; do thou Thy Breast prepare: And the mysterious Mirror He set there, To temper his reflected Image in, Clear of Distortion, Doubleness, and Sin: And in thy Conscience understanding this, The Double only seems, but The One is, Thyself to Self-annihilation give That this false Two in that true One may live. For this I say: if, looking in thy Heart, Thou for Self-whole mistake thy Shadow-part, That Shadow-part indeed into The Sun Shall melt, but senseless of its Union: But in that Mirror if with purged eyes Thy Shadow Thou for Shadow recognise, Then shalt Thou back into thy Centre fall A conscious Ray of that eternal All.’