pon me and those who love
thee in this nether world what will remove our afflictions, and bring
assurance to our hearts, and quiet the winds of our sorrows, and console
our eyes, and fulfil our hopes both in this world and the world to come--O
thou whom God hast singled out from amongst all the countenances of the
Abha Paradise, and hast honoured in both His earth and His Kingdom on
high, and of whom He has made mention in the Crimson Book, in words which
wafted the scent of musk and scattered its fragrance over all the dwellers
on earth!

O thou Greatest Holy Leaf! If I cry at every moment out of a hundred
mouths, and from each of these mouths I speak with a hundred thousand
tongues, yet I could never describe nor celebrate thy heavenly qualities,
which are known to none save only the Lord God; nor could I befittingly
tell of even the transient foam from out the ocean of thine endless favour
and grace.

Except for a very few, whose habitation is in the highest retreats of
holiness, and who circle, in the furthermost Sanctuary, by day and by
night about the throne of God, and are fed at the hand of the Abha Beauty
on purest milk--except for these, no soul of this nether world has known or
recognized thine immaculate, thy most sacred essence, nor has any
befittingly perceived that ambergris fragrance of thy noble qualities,
which richly anoints thy brow, and which issues from the divine wellspring
of mystic musk; nor has any caught its sweetness.

To this bear witness the Company on High, and beyond them God Himself, the
Supreme Lord of all the heavens and the earths: that during all thy days,
from thine earliest years until the close of thy life, thou didst
personify the attributes of thy Father, the Matchless, the Mighty. Thou
wert the fruit of His Tree, thou wert the lamp of His love, thou wert the
symbol of His serenity, and of His meekness, the pathway of His guidance,
the channel of His blessings, the sweet scent of His robe, the refuge of
His loved ones and His handmaidens, the mantle of His generosity and
grace.

O thou Remnant of the divine light, O thou fruit of the Cause of our
All-Compelling Lord! From the hour when thy days did set, on the horizon
of this Snow-White, this unique and Sacred Spot, our days have turned to
night, our joys to great consternation; our eyes have grown blind with
sorrow at thy passing, for it has brought back that supreme affliction yet
again, that direst convulsion, the departi