ed at the
camphor fountain.'(67)

Verily art Thou the Giving, the Forgiving, the Ever-Bestowing. Verily art
Thou the Merciful, the Compassionate.

O ye loved ones of God! The wine-cup of Heaven overfloweth, the banquet of
God's Covenant is bright with festive lights, the dawn of all bestowals is
breaking, the gentle winds of grace are blowing, and out of the invisible
world come good tidings of bounties and gifts. In flower-spangled meadows
hath the divine springtime pitched its tents, and the spiritual are
inhaling sweet scents from the Sheba of the spirit, carried their way by
the east wind. Now doth the mystic nightingale carol its odes, and buds of
inner meaning are bursting into blossoms delicate and fair. The field
larks are become the festival's musicians, and lifting wondrous voices
they cry and sing to the melodies of the Company on high, 'Blessed are ye!
Glad Tidings! Glad Tidings!' And they urge on the revellers of the Abha
Paradise to drink their fill, and they eloquently hold forth upon the
celestial tree, and utter their sacred cries. All this, that withered
souls who tread the desert of the heedless, and faded ones lost in the
sands of unconcern, may come to throbbing life again, and present
themselves at the feasts and revels of the Lord God.

Praise be to Him! The renown of His Cause hath reached to east and west,
and word of the power of the Abha Beauty hath quickened north and south.
That cry from the American continent is a choir of holiness, that shout
from far and near that riseth even to the Company on high is 'Ya
Baha'u'l-Abha!' Now is the east lit up with a glory, and the west
rose-sweet, and all the earth is fragrant with ambergris, and the winds
that blow over the Holy Shrine are laden with musk. Erelong shall ye see
that even the darkest lands are bright, and the continents of Europe and
Africa have turned into gardens of flowers, and forests of blossoming
trees.

But since the dawning of this Day-Star was in Persia, and since from that
orient the sun shone upon the west, it is our fondest hope that the flames
of love's fire should blaze ever more vehemently in that land, and that
there the splendour of this Holy Faith should grow ever more intense. May
the tumult of God's Cause so shake that land to its foundations, may the
spiritual force of His Word so manifest itself, as to make Iran the core
and focus of well-being and peace. May rectitude and conciliation, and
love and trust, issuin