Abou Ben Adhem | The Poetry Foundation
PART II.
THE DOUBLE DREAM.
“and saw within the moonlight of his room——— An angel, writing in a book of gold. LEIGH HUNT.”
[These lines are from Abou Ben Adhem, a poem about a Sufi saint published in 1834 by English Romantic poet Leigh Hunt (1784-1859).] After two trips to southwest Missouri in search of traces of Thomas Moore Johnson, I learned that a major conference venue in Springfield honors the memory of this Sufi saint!
These are the Unloved ones; yet ought not to be, for are they not somebody’s sons and daughters? Yes! Then they have rights; and the first, greatest, highest right of all is the right of being loved—loved by the people of the land— our world-cousins, for what we do, are doing, or have done; and to be loved, for the sake of the dear soul within, by somebody else’s son or daughter.
“So think we of the Rosicrucian Order; so, one day, will think the world.
“‘Come down in thy profoundest gloom—Without one radiant firefly’s light, Beneath thine ebon arch entomb Earth from the gaze of Heaven, O Night. A deed of darkness must be done, Put out the moon, roll back the sun.’ [From the poem The Missionary’s Burial by James Montgomery, published 1824.]