I

All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.

II

What is the Truth? was askt of yore.  Reply all object Truth is one
As twain of halves aye makes a whole; the moral Truth for all is none.

III

Ye scantly-learned Zâhids learn from Aflatûn and Aristû,1Plato and Aristotle.
While Truth is real like your good: th’ Untrue, like ill, is real too;

IV

As palace mirror’d in the stream, as vapour mingled with the skies,
So weaves the brain of mortal man the tangled web of Truth and Lies.

V

What see we here?  Forms, nothing more!  Forms fill the brightest strongest eye,
We know not substance; ’mid the shades shadows ourselves we live and die.

VI

“Faith mountains moves,” I hear: I see the practice of the world unheed
The foolish vaunt, the blatant boast that serves our vanity to feed.

VII

“Faith stands unmoved”; and why?  Because man’s silly fancies still remain,
And will remain till wiser man the day-dreams of his youth disdain.

VIII

“’Tis blessèd to believe,” you say: The saying may be true enow
And it can add to Life a light:– only remains to show us how.

IX

E’en if I could I nould believe your tales and fables stale and trite,
Irksome as twice-sung tune that tires the dullèd ear of drowsy wight.

X

With God’s foreknowledge man’s free will! what monster-growth of human brain,
What pow’ers of light shall ever pierce this puzzle dense with words inane?

XI

Vainly the heart on Providence calls, such aid to seek were hardly wise,
For man must own the pitiless Law that sways the globe and sevenfold skies.

XII

“Be ye Good Boys, go seek for Heav’en, come pay the priest that holds the key”;
So spake, and speaks, and aye shall speak the last to enter Heaven, – he.

XIII

Are these the words for men to hear? yet such the Church’s general tongue,
The horseleech-cry so strong so high her heav’enward Psalms and Hymns among.

XIV

What?  Faith a merit and a claim, when with the brain ’tis born and bred?
Go, fool, thy foolish way and dip in holy water burièd dead!2In the 1894 edition of The Kasîdah, Lady Burton has a note of her own on Section VI, couplet xiv: [see footnote below].

XV

Yet follow not th’ unwisdom-path, cleave not to this and that disclaim;
Believe in all that man believes; here all and naught are both the same.

XVI

But is it so?  How may we know?  Haply this Fate, this Law may be
A word, a sound, a breath; at most the Zâhid’s moonstruck theory.

XVII

Yes Truth may be, but ’tis not Here; mankind must seek and find it There,
But Where nor I nor you can tell, nor aught earth-mother ever bare.

XVIII

Enough to think that Truth can be: come sit we where the roses glow,
Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to ’unknow.

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1 Plato and Aristotle.

2 In the 1894 edition of The Kasîdah, Lady Burton has a note of her own on Section VI, couplet xiv:
   “I think he is alluding, though he has not expressed it, to the Marcionites’ heresy of baptizing for the dead.  The Marcionites were heretics who lived at Sinope, A.D. 150.  Marcion came to Rome and believed in principles similar to the Manichæans.  When a man died, one of the Marcionites sat on his coffin, and another asked him if he were willing to be baptized, and he answered, ‘Yes,’ upon which he was baptized.  These heretics quoted Paul (I Cor. xv., 29), ‘Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise at all?  Why are they then baptized for the dead?’  Dr. E. Burdoe says that ‘this line has no reference to the Marcionite heresy at all, but to Holy baptism, wherein we are buried with Christ.  The reference is manifestly to Romans vi., 4, “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death,” and the following context.’”
   [It is worth noting that Lady Burton was a zealous Roman Catholic, and was never able to accept her husband’s views on these matters, insisting – despite all the evidence – that he was really just a wayward Christian.  Her note to this couplet is typical of her attempts to Christianize the Saracen Knight.]