The Scented Garden

132 Satisfaction excludes speculation. I do not care, for love is all ; one moment lent to mullah-talk Is lost to love ; and why complain when nothing is at all amiss ? The folk that haunt the evil house of Fatma to Ha- kim6 resort Wisely indeed : Thy drugs ! they cry : we cannot make a shift to piss !7 The Zahid still frequents the mosque and moans the dreary Fatihah : O fools ! ye miss love’s podex-joy, and missing love all good ye miss. Come, O Habib, thy podex close on El Qahar’s enamoured tool ! Though we mistake the world and God, at least is no mistake in this. 1. After this ode the “ secret key-number ” breaks down. It is said that there are five odes missing. But no doubt need therefore be cast upon the genuineness of the following odes. Some weight is to be given to the contention that there can be only 42 odes, neither more nor less, for mystical reasons. Their Persian dress I cannot learn ; but the Egyptians knew 42 Gods who purify the soul ; and the Jews speak of the “ Revolution of the 42-fold Name of the Palaces of Yetzirah ” — the world which should invade and redeem this ma- terial scheme of things. Talking of this “ scheme of things ”, I remember the wit of a certain comely youth at Oxford, who reproached his exhausted lover with the quatrain : “ Ah love ! could Thou and I with Fate conspire