The Book of Akbar 3.1.1

3.1.1

What a Word was that whose utterance Unveiled the eighteen thousand! No feast equals it in intoxicating power; No rival comes nigh it in supremacy. It is the initiator in the workshop; It sits enthroned in the palace. Whatever reaches the heart of the wise, The heart utters to the tongue and the tongue rehearses to the ear. Its path is from the adit to the exit of hearts; Expression and audition are its arena. In reason’s observatory the tongue and the ear Are the rising and setting of speech’s moon. We cannot reach its sublime foundation by the ladder of the terial forms must also be combinations of the elements. skies nor can the swift foot of reason plant a step in its nature's mysterious wilderness. Its disposition is fiery, its constitution aerial, its nature earthy but resembling water. Its fount is the fire-temple of the heart; its culmination, the blissful abode of the atmosphere; it is as water in the flow of its traffic; earth’s surface is its place of repose. Judges of precedence in the ranks of glory, have in consonance with their knowledge and insight, recognized Speech as Commander-in-Chief of Truth’s army,—nay, as the true son and heir of the mind. They have felt it to be the Archimage of knowledge, the fire-temple of the heart,—nay, to be the mind’s first birth. Especially preeminent is that Speech which is the ornamented armament of the splendid volume; adorned preface of the sublime code, that is, is the praise of the Lord of heaven and earth;