Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, MOHAMMEDANISM, by RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

MOHAMMEDANISM, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: While the high truths to man in christ revealed
Last Line: The god of will and power.
Alternate Author Name(s): Houghton, 1st Baron; Houghton, Lord
Subject(s): Islam; Muhammad, The Prophet (570-632); Mysticism; Mahomet; Mohammed


WHILE the high truths to man in Christ revealed
Were met by early foes,
Who oft assault by strategy concealed,
And oft in force arose;

While Pagan fancy would not lay aside
Her pleasurable faith,
At call of one who lived in that he died,
And preached that Life was Death;

And while philosophy with old belief
Blent fragments of the new,
Though every master held himself the chief
Discerner of the true;

In that convulsion and distress of thought,
Th' Idea that long ago
Had ruled the Hebrew mind occasion caught
To strike a final blow.

In the fresh passions of a vigorous race
Was sown a living seed,
Strong these contending mysteries to displace
By one plain ancient creed.

Thus in a life and land, such as of old
The Patriarch name begot,
Rose a new Prophet, simple to behold,
Cast in a humble lot;

Who in the wild requirements of his state
Let half his life go by,
And then stood up a man of faith and fate,
That could the world defy.

God and his Prophets, and the final day,
He preached, and little more,
Resting the weight of all he had to say
On what was said before.

He bade men mark the fissureless blue sky,
The streams that spring and run,
The clouds that with regenerate life supply
The havoc of the sun:

All forms of life profuse and different,
The camel and the palm,
To them for sustenance or service sent,
And wondrous herbs of balm;

He bade them mark how all existence comes
From one Creative will,
As well the bee that 'mid the blossoms hums,
As human pride and skill.

How shadows of all beings, morn and even,
Before Him humbly bend,
And, willing or unwilling, earth and heaven
Work out His solemn end.

Therefore is God the Universal Power,
The Absolute, the One, --
With whom a thousand years are as an hour,
And earth as moon or sun.

And shall this God who all creation fills
His creature men permit
The puny fragments of their mortal wills
Against his might to set?

What wonderful insanity of pride!
With objects of the eye
And fanciful devices to divide
His awful monarchy.

Can vain associates seated on His throne,
Command the only Lord?
What strength have they but flows from Him alone,
Adorers or adored?

Hew down the Idols: prayer is due to Power, --
But these are weak and frail:
-- By men and angels every living hour
Father, Creator, hail!

So preached of God Mohammed, of himself
He spoke in lowly words,
As one who wanted not or power or pelf,
Or more than God affords;

As a poor bearer with the message sent
Of God's majestic will,
In his whole being resolutely bent
That mission to fulfil.

The miracles to which he oft appealed
Were Nature's, not his own,
Teaching that God was everywhere revealed --
Not in His words alone.

No Poet he, weaving capricious dreams,
To please inconstant youth,
But one who uttered, without shows and seems,
The serious facts of truth;

And threats and promises, that line by line
Were parts to mortals given
Of that eternal Book of thought divine --
The Prototype in heaven:

Which ever and anon from that sad dawn
Of sin that Adam saw
In Pentateuch, and Gospel, and Kuran
Enunciates Allah's law.

In Noah, Abraham, Moses, Earth beholds
The prophet lineage run,
Down till the fulness of due time unfolds
Immaculate Mary's son.

Whence to Arabia's free unlettered child
The great commission past, --
Mohammed, the Apostle of the Wild,
The purest and the last.

Thus stood he wholly in reflected light,
Rejecting other claim
To power or honour than attends of right
The Apostolic name.

Yet louder still he preached the day that comes
Unhastened, undelayed,
Fixed to consign to their eternal homes
All men that God has made:

The day when children shall grow gray with fear,
And, like a ball of sand,
God shall take up this our terrestrial sphere,
In the hollow of his hand;

When without intercessor, friend, or kin,
Each man shall stand alone,
Before his judge, and, once for ever, win
A prison or a throne.

The Unbeliever in his agony
Shall seek in whom to trust,
And when his idols help him not, shall cry
"O God! that I were dust!"

Before the Faithful, as their troops arise,
A glorious light shall play,
And angels herald them to Paradise,
To bliss without decay;

Gardens of green, that pales not in the sun,
And ever-budding flowers;
Rivers that cool in brightest noon-day run,
Nor need the shade of bowers;

Seats of high honour and supreme repose,
To which the laden trees
Bend at desire, and every hour disclose
Fresh tastes and fragrances;

Deep cups of wine that bring no after-pain
By angel-children plied,
And love without satiety or stain
For bridegroom or for bride.

While yet a purer essence of delight
Awaits the bolder few,
That plunge their being in the Infinite,
And rise to life anew.

Such was the guise of Truth that on its front
The new religion wore,
And in new words men followed, as is wont,
Precepts they scorn'd before.

And the Faith rose from families to tribes,
From tribes to nations rose,
And open enmities and ribald gibes
Grew feeble to oppose.

"Resigned to God" -- this name the Faithful bore --
This simple, noble name;
And reckoned life a thing of little store,
A transitory game.

Thus was Endurance on the banner writ
That led the Muslim forth,
And wonder not that they who follow it
Should conquer half the earth.

What might the men not do, who thus could know
No fear and fear no loss?
One only thing -- they could not overthrow
The kingdom of the Cross.

And this, because it held an element
Beyond their spirits' range,
A Truth for which the faith they represent
Had nothing to exchange.

One God the Arabian Prophet preached to man,
One God the Orient still
Adores through many a realm of mighty span,
A God of Power and Will --

A God that shrouded in His lonely light
Rests utterly apart
From all the vast Creations of His might,
From Nature, Man, and Art: --

A Being in whose solitary hand
All other beings weigh
No more than in the potter's reckoning stand
The workings of his clay: --

A Power that at its pleasure will create,
To save or to destroy;
And to eternal pain predestinate,
As to eternal joy: --

An unconditioned, irrespective, will,
Demanding simple awe,
Beyond all principles of good or ill,
Above idea of law.

No doctrine here of perfect Love divine,
To which the bounds belong
Only of that unalterable line
Disparting right from wrong: --

A love, that, while it must not regulate
The issues of free-will,
By its own sacrifice can expiate
The penalties of ill.

No message here of man redeemed from sin,
Of fallen nature raised,
By inward strife and moral discipline,
Higher than e'er debased, --

Of the immense parental heart that yearns
From highest heaven to meet
The poorest wandering spirit that returns
To its Creator's feet.

No Prophet here by common essence bound
At once to God and man,
Author Himself and part of the profound
And providential plan:

Himself the ensample of unuttered worth,
Himself the living sign,
How by God's grace the fallen sons of earth
May be once more divine.

-- Thus in the faiths old Heathendom that shook
Were different powers of strife;
Mohammed's truth lay in a holy Book,
Christ's in a sacred Life.

So, while the world rolls on from change to change,
And realms of thought expand,
The Letter stands without expanse or range,
Stiff as a dead man's hand;

While, as the life-blood fills the growing form,
The Spirit Christ has shed
Flows through the ripening ages fresh and warm,
More felt than heard or read.

And therefore, though ancestral sympathies,
And closest ties of race,
May guard Mohammed's precept and decrees,
Through many a tract of space,

Yet in the end the tight-drawn line must break,
The sapless tree must fall,
Nor let the form one time did well to take
Be tyrant over all.

The tide of things rolls forward, surge on surge,
Bringing the blessed hour,
When in Himself the God of Love shall merge
The God of Will and Power.





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