I said, ‘O phantom of slumber! who sent thee?’
He said, ‘He sent me whom thou knowest;
He whose love occupies thee.’
The beloved of my heart visited me in the darkness of night:
I stood, to show him honour, until he sat down.
I said, ‘O thou my petition, and all my desire!
Hast thou come at midnight, and not feared the watchmen?’[watchmen?’]
He said to me, ‘I feared; but, however, love
Had taken from me my soul and my breath.’”
Compare the above with the second and five following verses of the fifth chapter of Solomon’s Song.—Finding that songs of this description are extremely numerous, and almost the only poems sung at zikrs; that they are composed for this purpose, and intended only to have a spiritual sense (though certainly not understood in such a sense by the generality of the vulgar);[[537]] I cannot entertain any doubt as to the design of Solomon’s Song. The specimens which I have just given of the religious love-songs of the Muslims have not been selected in preference to others as most agreeing with that of Solomon; but as being in frequent use; and the former of the two as having been sung at the zikr which I have begun to describe. I must now resume the description of that zikr.