ts to breathe: so is the Taj;
You see it with the heart, before the eyes
Have scope to gaze. All white! snow white! cloud white!

We cannot say much in praise of the sixth line:

Insomuch that it haps as when some face:

it is curiously awkward and unmusical. But this passage from Sa'di is
remarkable:

When Earth, bewildered, shook in earthquake-throes,
With mountain-roots He bound her borders close;
Turkis and ruby in her rocks He stored,
And on her green branch hung His crimson rose.

He shapes dull seed to fair imaginings;
Who paints with moisture as He painteth things?
Look! from the cloud He sheds one drop on ocean,
As from the Father's loins one drop He brings;--

And out of that He forms a peerless pearl,
And, out of this, a cypress boy or girl;
Utterly wotting all their innermosts,
For all to Him is visible! Uncurl

Your cold coils, Snakes! Creep forth, ye thrifty Ants!
Handless and strengthless He provides your wants
Who from the 'Is not' planned the 'Is to be,'
And Life in non-existent void implants.

Sir Edwin Arnold suffers, of course, from the inevitable comparison that
one cannot help making between his work and the work of Edward
Fitzgerald, and certainly Fitzgerald could never have written such a line
as 'utterly wotting all their innermosts,' but it is interesting to read
almost any translation of those wonderful Oriental poets with their
strange blending of philosophy and sensuousness, of simple parable or
fable and obscure mystic utterance. What we regret most in Sir Edwin
Arnold's book is his habit of writing in what really amounts to a sort of
'pigeon English.' When we are told that 'Lady Duffreen, the mighty
Queen's Vice-queen,' paces among the charpoys of the ward 'no whit afraid
of sitla, or of tap'; when the Mirza explains--

ag lejao!
To light the kallians for the Saheb and me,

and the attendant obeys with 'Achcha! Achcha!' when we are invited to
listen to 'the Vina and the drum' and told about ekkas, Byragis, hamals
and Tamboora, all that we can say is that to such ghazals we are not
prepared to say either Shamash or Afrin. In English poetry we do not
want

chatkis for the toes,
Jasams for elbow-bands, and gote and har,
Bala and mala.

This is not local colour; it is a sort of local discoloration. It does
not add anything to the vividness of the scene. It does not bring t