Penny Dreadfuls, 1900 · page 131 of 142
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and the Salaman and Absal of Jami — page 131: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page Description This is a page of running verse poetry (page 105) from "Salámán and Absál," presented in a decorative Victorian format with ornamental borders. The text consists of several stanzas in blank verse that appear to be commentary or exegesis on a narrative about two characters—Salámán and Absál—explaining the allegorical meaning of events: their creation of a false paradise of sensual passion, Absál's deception and the failure of desire, Salámán's spiritual return to God and intellectual righteousness, and his second flight into the desert. The verse treats these events as moral and spiritual allegory rather than literal narrative.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
| | SALAMAN AND ABSAL. 105 And what the Flood on which they sail’d, with those Fantastic creatures peopled; and that Isle In which their Paradise awhile they made, And thought, for ever P—That false Paradise Amid the fluctuating Waters found Of Sensual passion, in whose bosom lies A world of Being from the light of God Deep as in unsubsiding Deluge drown’d. And why was it that AssA1 in that Isle So soon deceived in her Delight, and He Fell short of his Desire P—that was to show How soon the Senses of their Passion tire, And in a surfeit of themselves expire. And what the turning of SarAmin’s Heart Back to THE Sau, and to the throne of Might And Glory yearning P—What but the return Of the lost Sout to his true Parentage, And back from Carnal error looking up Repentant to his Intellectual Right. And when the Man between his living Shame Distracted, and the Love that would not die, Fled once again—what meant that second Flight Into the Desert, and that Pile of Fire COMICLMOOOKS. (C©)