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Still, the scheme was never for very long absent from his thoughts, and during his wanderings in Somaliland, the Tanganyika country and elsewhere, he often delighted the natives by reciting or reading some of the tales. The history of Burton's translation of The Arabian Nights is, as we shall subsequently show, curiously analogous to that of The Kasidah.
Said he to her, "I purpose to recite a Kasidah, an ode, in his praise, that he may redouble in affection for me." "Thou art right in thine intent," she answered, "so gather thy wits together and weigh thy words, and I shall surely see my husband favoured with his highest favour."
I read all the reviews that fell in my way, but though some were spiteful that need not discourage... Believe me, dearest G., your affectionate Zookins." Miss Stisted's novel was her first and last, but she did write another book some considerable time later, which, however, would not have won Mrs. Burton's approval. The Kasidah, 1880.
He said he would come to Therapia to-morrow." This time Mrs. Clarke looked almost strongly surprised. "What did you talk about?" she asked. "Chiefly about a book he seems to have been reading recently, Richard Burton's 'Kasidah. You know it, of course?" "I remember Omar Khayyam much better." "He spoke strangely, almost terribly about it.
At first it positively swarmed with them, but subsequently, by the advice of a friend, a considerable number such as "wox" and "pight" was removed. If the marquetry of The Kasidah compares but feebly with the compendious splendours of FitzGerald's quatrains; and if the poem has undoubted wastes of sand, nevertheless, the diligent may here and there pick up amber.
And the line in "The Kasidah" which Dion had pondered over came to her, and she thought of the "death that walks in form of life." As the carriage went upon the bridge she looked across to Stamboul, and was faced by the Mosque of the Valideh.
The recurrence of this minor chord, in the savage sweep of Burton's protest against the irony of existence, is a fascination that the "Kasidah" has in common with every great poem of the world. The materialism of the book is peculiar in that it is Oriental, and Orientalism is peculiarly mystical.
The slide of jeweled glass had been removed from it. A white ray fell on an open book laid on a table. "I was reading here" he looked "a thing called 'The Kasidah. Sit down!" He pulled the boy down. "Now what is all this? Your mother must be in the house." "But I tell you she isn't!" Dion had sat down between Jimmy and the opening on to the terrace.
The filmy white had been lifted in the process of sewing, and a little exquisitely bound white book was disclosed beneath it. "May I look?" "Yes, do." Dion took the book up, and read the title, "The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi." "I never heard of this. Where did you get it?" "Guy Daventry left it here by mistake yesterday. I must give it to him to-night."
The "Kasidah" was written in 1853, and it is, in its opening, much like Fitz Gerald's Rubaiyat, though Burton never saw that gem of philosophy and song, until eight years after. "The Kasidah" was not printed until 1880. It is difficult to interpret, because it so clearly interprets itself. It must be read. It cannot be "explained."
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