The Scented Garden

10 Introduction to me that a large class of scholars might be reached by considerable extension of the notes to cover ethnographical, critical, and other interesting points. We went to work accordingly during my last leave in England, and accomplished (I think) a good deal. (Major Lutiy’s death left this paragraph incom- plete. I need only add that on his departure for the front he sent the MSS., with numerous further ad- ditions, to me. I have retained the paragraph to explain the occasional diversity of opinion in read- ing or interpretation, and the way in which ‘ I ’ and ‘ We ’ are alternatively used in the notes. Ed.) The verse rendering are in every case later pa- raphrases from the original drafts, and the prose has been carefully revised at leisure. I wished to put the whole into verse : but the ‘ prodigious difficulties of the monorhyme ’, as Bur- ton only too inadequately says, beat me as often as not. Had I been able to obtain the aid of a profes- sional poet, I might have made a better job of it, for my experience is confined to vers de société ! But I have done my best. THE SUFI DOCTRINES No apology is needed, since the publication of Sir William Jones’s able monograph, for the gross symbolism of such Oriental poems as those of Ha- fiz, the Song of Songs, the Ghazals of ‘ Ismat of Bokhara ’ — not to mention the obscene Chinese Aphorisms of Kwaw. Yet no doubt though Hafiz sings chiefly of wine, Solomon of Woman, and ‘ Ismat of harloty, we sooner pardon these freedoms because we our- selves can understand, though we can never ap- prove of them : but they seem innocent indeed