wounds felt by St. Francis and St. Teresa. These are excessive
dramatizations of the symbolism under which the mystic tends
instinctively to represent his spiritual intuition to the surface
consciousness. Here, in the special sense-perception which he
feels to be most expressive of Reality, his peculiar
idiosyncrasies come out.

Now Kabîr, as we might expect in one whose reactions to the
spiritual order were so wide and various, uses by turn all the
symbols of sense. He tells us that he has "seen without sight"
the effulgence of Brahma, tasted the divine nectar, felt the
ecstatic contact of Reality, smelt the fragrance of the heavenly
flowers. But he was essentially a poet and musician: rhythm and
harmony were to him the garments of beauty and truth. Hence in
his lyrics he shows himself to be, like Richard Rolle, above all
things a musical mystic. Creation, he says again and again, is
full of music: it is music. At the heart of the Universe
"white music is blossoming": love weaves the melody, whilst
renunciation beats the time. It can be heard in the home as well
as in the heavens; discerned by the ears of common men as well as
by the trained senses of the ascetic. Moreover, the body of
every man is a lyre on which Brahma, "the source of all music,"
plays. Everywhere Kabîr discerns the "Unstruck Music of the
Infinite"--that celestial melody which the angel played to St.
Francis, that ghostly symphony which filled the soul of Rolle
with ecstatic joy. [Footnote: Nos. XVII, XVIII, XXXIX, XLI, LIV,
LXXVI, LXXXIII, LXXXIX, XCVII.] The one figure which he adopts
from the Hindu Pantheon and constantly uses, is that of Krishna
the Divine Flute Player. [Footnote: Nos. L, LIII, LXVIII.] He
sees the supernal music, too, in its visual embodiment, as