'"[24] And the Afghan poet Abdu 'r-Rahman says:
"Every tree, every shrub, stands ready to bend before him; every herb
and blade of grass is a tongue to mutter his praises." And Horace Smith,
that most pleasing but unpretentious writer, both of verse and prose,
has thus finely amplified the idea of "tongues in trees":
Your voiceless lips, O Flowers, are living preachers,
Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book,
Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers,
From loneliest nook.
'Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth,
And tolls its perfume on the passing air,
Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth
A call to prayer;--
Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column
Attest the feebleness of mortal hand,
But to that fane, most catholic and solemn,
Which God hath planned:
To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder,
Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply;
Its choir, the winds and waves, its organ, thunder,
Its dome, the sky.
There, amid solitude and shade, I wander
Through the green aisles, and, stretched upon the sod,
Awed by the silence, reverently ponder
The ways of God.
[24] "In the name of God" is part of the formula employed by
pious Muslims in their acts of worship, and on entering
upon any enterprise of danger or
uncertainty--_bi'smi'llahi ar-rahman ar-rahimi_, "In the
name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate!" These
words are usually placed at the beginning of Muhammedan
books, secular as well as religions; and they form part
of the Muslim Confession of Faith, used in the last
extremity: "In the name of God, the Merciful, the
Compassionate! There is no strength nor any power save
in God, the High, the Mighty.
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