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earlier volumes we come across a number of love poems
and Nature descriptions, the following extracts being
fair samples of these :
When I approach thee, love, I lay aside
All that is mortal in me. With a heart
Absolved and pure, and cleansed in every part
Of every thought that I might wish to hide
From God, I come......
A gleam of light sailed o'er the water's breast
From out the fading distance towards the shore
Crowning with gold each swelling wave that boie
This gloom of shadows deepening in the West.
Now here, now there, from shivered crest to crest,
It leaped, it flew—and then was seen no more.
Even in his 6 Islamic ' poems Sir Nizamat reveals a
similar poetic sensibility and ease in versification. The
poems, however, are not ' Islamic ' in the narrow reli-
gious or theological sense. Poetry must be inspired
somehow, and it happens that several of Sir Nizamat's
poems are inspired by Islam, its sacred places, its Great
Caliphs, its spiritual Empire. It is not necessary to be
a Muslim to be able to appreciate the thought or language
of these lines :
Not in those realms where rivers flow,
Of milk and honeyed wine,
Or where with mystic light aglow,
The eyes of Houris shine ;
Not there, O soaring spirit! lies
Thy home of bliss, thy paradise.
Sir Nizamat has been described by his friend, Mr.
\ A. Yusuf Ali, as a man 6 who finds peace in Poetry, wealth
* in the stores of History and Imagination, consolation in
\the message of religion and serene beauty in the person-
mysticism of the Preacher of Islam.' As the