r whom the Unknowable has
proved itself to contain the Knowable: the ball of fire to hold within
it an earthly substance unconsumed; he deserves credit for the
magnitude, not scorn for the extravagance, of his conception.

Lyric. "Fire has been cradled in the flint, though its Ethereal
splendours may disclaim the association."

6. "MIHRAB SHAH" vindicates the existence of physical suffering as
necessary to the consciousness of well-being; and also, and most
especially, as neutralizing the differences, and thus creating the one
complete bond of sympathy, between man and man.

Lyric. "Your soul is weighed down by a feeble body. In me a strong body
is allied to a sluggish soul. You would fitly leave me behind. Impeded
as you also are, I may yet overtake you."

7. "A CAMEL-DRIVER" declares the injustice of punishment, in regard to
all cases in which the offence has been committed in ignorance; and
shows also that, while a timely warning would always have obviated such
an offence, it is often sufficiently punished by the culprit's too tardy
recognition of it. "God's justice distinguishes itself from that of man
in the acknowledgment of this fact."

The Lyric deals specially with the imperfections of human judgment. "You
have overrated my small faults, you have failed to detect the greater
ones."

8. "TWO CAMELS" is directed against asceticism. "An ill-fed animal
breaks down in the fulfilment of its task. A man who deprives himself of
natural joys, not for the sake of his fellow-men, but for his own, is
also unfitted for the obligations of Life. For he cannot instruct others
in its use and abuse. Nor, being thus ignorant of earth, can he conceive
of heaven."

The Lyric shows how the Finite may prefigure the Infinite, by
illustrations derived from science and from love.

9. "CHERRIES" illustrates the axiom that a gift must be measured, not by
itself, but by the faculty of the giver, and by the amount of loving
care which he has bestowed upon it. Man's general performance is to be
judged from the same point of view.

The Lyric connects itself with the argument less closely and less
seriously in this case than in the foregoing ones. The speaker has
striven to master the art of poetry, and found life too short for it.
"He contents himself with doing little, only because doing nothing is
worse. But when he turns from verse-making to making love, or, as the
sense implies, seeks to express in love what he has failed to ex