The Immortal Memory

The star has not fallen! I still see its glow, and still discern in it guidance! Nor has the flower perished: I still breathe its pure perfume in the living “Breezes”!

Nor has beauty set: in its horizons there still remain “Pictures and Memories” of the beloved, abiding!

But, Salma, there are wishes that cannot be attained in this world of ours, so narrow in its bounds and horizons; and among my wishes was that I should not address you eulogizing, lamenting, weeping, but rather delighting in your sweet, plaintive talk, intoxicated by the music of your voice — a music whose like I never heard among voices. In it the purity of your soul flowed clear and plaintive, and the loftiness of your spirit glittered, limpid, captivating, great, and proud.

And in it there was so much of your overflowing, sweet feelings, of your tender, delicate sensibility, that it answered in the hidden places of the heart, and stirred in it joy and pathos, tranquillity and peace; and there was in it what clears and rises and floats, casting over souls a lofty, enchanting spell.

For you were the heroine in your struggle; the foremost, in your courage, in your combat and your rising; the splendid one in your literature; the sublime example in your patience, your steadfastness, your endurance. For within your bodily frailty there ran a moral strength whose reach scarcely any single person attains, save one distinguished by excellence and by true faith in the goodness of existence and the nobility of man's mission.

Yes, I would not have wished to be your eulogist, lamenting and weeping; but you have a claim on us that cannot be denied, and a hand we shall not forget. You have a claim on us:

that we always remember that you were in the vanguard of those who kindled strength in the resolve of the Eastern woman, and stirred in her spirit the awakening toward emancipation;

and that you were a living, shining idea in the field of resurgence — for renewal, for progress, for the climb up the ascending paths of advancement; and that you lit from your own being blazing candles to guide the rising generation;

and that you poured from the glowing essence of your heart life into the arteries of the nation;

and that you gave, from the wellspring of your spirit, what cannot be reckoned by human measures — to the truth, in the cause of the truth, and in defense of the truth.

So you were great in the breadth of your bosom, the breadth of your mind, and the breadth of your heart, which made room for the homeland as it made room for the humane ideals it worked for and fought to spread.

And the voice of truth echoes on through the boundless expanse of time; it rises, however faint and gentle and whispering it may be, for it comes from truthful hearts, penetrating the depths of consciences, resounding through the intellectual existence that has no end.

And we see the past sink into the deep of oblivion; but the raging waves break upon the shores of time, where the lamps of burning souls shine, kindled from the light of the divine sublimity, which extinction cannot reach.

And its billows sink and draw back, thundering and awed, there where those conquering powers seethe — the powers of the minds and the geniuses that struggle for intellectual sublimity, in which immortality and glory lie hidden.

And humanity, racing on the wheel of the days, takes comfort and finds guidance and rises by this light, for it comes from the ember of pure souls that gleam forever, mocking the ashes of death.

And humanity conquers and triumphs by those powers that have drunk deep from the fountain of the heights — enough to quench the generations, and to store up for them in the spirit the fragrance of devotion, the scent of righteousness, and the perfume of nobility.

Yes — I would not have wished, Salma, to be your eulogist and elegist. For what need has light of eulogy, when its ray shines on, abiding, to make plain, to guide, to illumine? And you were, in woman's darkest nights, a radiant light.

And what need has the flower of lament, when its perfume, wafting abroad, proclaims beauty, integrity, and innocence? And you were, in the wilderness of life and amid the ugliness of events that turned harsh against its daughters, fragrant with a graceful, beautiful literature whose freshness does not wither.

So peace be upon you — fragrant as your soul, pure as your heart, true as your struggle, deep as your faith, immortal as your literature.

Peace, from one who looked out over her narrow world and did not find you, and so wept for a rose that opened fresh before the dawn, then withered early, before evening — a rose that was a symbol of struggle, of charity, of goodness, and of beauty.