# Can There Be a Baha'i Poetry?

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-20 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Geoffrey Nash, Can There Be a Baha'i Poetry?, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Can There Be a Bahá’í Poetry?
> 
> Geoffrey P. Nash
> 
> Bahá’í World XVII 1976-1979, pp 620-4
> 
> [This essay appears here in its original form. At the request of the Canadian Association for Studies on the
> Bahá’í Faith it was subsequently revised for inclusion in vol. 7 of Bahá’í Studies. See also 'The Heroic Soul
> and the Ordinary Self—a Study in the Religious Poetry of Roger White,' by Geoffrey Nash.]
> 
> THE high station ascribed in Bahá’í scripture to art has led a number of Bahá’í artists to
> predicate and even to seek Bahá’í forms and artistic conventions. Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the
> Bahá’í Faith, made the following comments on this:
> Music, as one of the arts, is a natural cultural development, and the Guardian does not
> feel that there should be any cultivation of 'Bahá’í Music' any more than we are trying
> to develop a Bahá’í school of painting or writing. The believers are free to paint, write
> and compose as their talents may guide them . . . As long as they have music for its
> own sake it is all right, but they should not consider it Bahá’í music.2
> This is augmented by the following statement:
> As regards producing a book of Bahá’í songs, your understanding that there is no
> cultural expression which could be called Bahá’í at this time (distinctive music,
> literature, art, architecture, etc., being the flower of the civilization and not coming at
> the beginning of a new Revelation), is correct. However, that does not mean that we
> haven't Bahá’í songs, in other words, songs written by Bahá’ís on Bahá’í subjects.3
> In considering poetry, the divinest of the arts, it is essential to differentiate between the true
> poet and the mere versifier. A true poet must have poetic vision, be attuned to great themes and
> ultimate mysteries, be impelled by his Muse to express his perceptions in poetic form. Such a soul
> can be born into any age. But the above intimations from the Guardian are unmistakable in their
> import. Great art is the flower of civilization, and its development in the Bahá’í community, natural
> and inevitable. We are as yet in the early Springtime of the new World Order when the golden
> harvest of Bahá’í civilization is but a vision, though an assured one, of the future. Bahá’ís
> anticipate—it is a hallmark of their faith—a great world civilization in the fullness of time. At
> present, consonant with the metaphor of natural cycles so ubiquitously used in the Bahá’í Holy
> Writings, Bahá’ís recognize the barrenness of the times we live in as symptomatic of the season for
> planting the seeds. Hastening the advent of the oneness of mankind is the surest way to expedite the
> appearance of a world civilization unparalleled in recorded annals.
> Must we then neglect the arts now, as of secondary importance at this stage of our history? I
> incline to believe such a course would prove unsupportable for Bahá’ís. I believe great enterprises
> have never proceeded without a sense of poetry on the part of their executors. If empires are built
> upon valour, upon physical prowess, do they not require exertion of an energetic, even an
> imaginative will? Much more must this be so for the promotion and establishment of the great
> religions. Indeed the present activities of the Bahá’ís are saturated with poetry; their past equally, if
> not more so. Does not Bahá’í Holy Writing—the Word of God we believe—exude poetry? The
> writings of Shoghi Effendi abound in evocative turns of phrase. Presumably Bahá’ís respond to this
> beauty. Can it be that they will continue to do so but half consciously? If they do, it will be against
> the experience of the early years of the Bahá’í movement.
> We recall how so many of the Bábí martyrs died with poetry on their lips, be it a couplet or
> more from Háfiz or verses of their own composition, for many were themselves poets. One of the
> greatest jewels of the Bábí dispensation was that eloquent, ethereal poetess Táhirih—a woman
> renowned in the East for her poetry as for her unique stature among women. Bahá’u’lláh, the
> Author of Arabic and Persian odes which are held to be so exquisitely beautiful as to be
> untranslatable, liked to have about Him believers who, at His bidding, would recite to Him their
> poetry. Nabil-i-A'zam, companion of Bahá’u’lláh and respected historian of the early years of the
> Bábí and Bahá’í Faiths, was an inspired poet. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would have Bahá’í poets recite their
> works in the Holy Shrines.
> If we consider the lovers of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá who came from the Occident, we find that Lua
> Getsinger wrote verses imploring His favour. And thanks to a living Bahá’í poet, Roger White, the
> prose poetry of Juliet Thompson's diaries has emerged in blank verse that tunes once again the
> strings of the proverbial Aeolian harp. George Townshend wrote devotional poetry and meditations
> of high quality. Shall not the Bahá’ís go on? Assuredly, they will continue to be inspired by Bahá’í
> ideals to write poetry of Bahá’í character.
> But it is true as well that what Yeats once called ‘The Muses' sterner laws' require of the poet
> a single-minded devotion which is perhaps at present incompatible with the time required to be
> spent on the active establishment of the Bahá’í Faith in the world. Moreover, a great poet works
> within a tradition, and the tradition of great poetry has declined if not virtually died out.
> In the modern world the poet is perforce an embittered outsider. By 1850, it was beginning to
> become apparent that the poet, the sensitive man, felt himself adrift in an alien world. The
> nineteenth century helped to fix the alienation of the poet in modern times, and also fixed in the
> minds of men in general an erroneous conception of poets as bizarre, extravagant individuals,
> invariably at war with received values. The century which had begun with Shelley's claim that poets
> were the 'unacknowledged legislators of the world' and Carlyle's prediction that Literature would
> become the new, green branch of religion, ended with Nietzsche declaring that the man of genius
> was outside of, and must necessarily contemn, established social values. The claim of the poets, if it
> had grown more shrill and unbalanced, had done so because society had turned away from noble
> values. The best poets have always dealt with intangibles, with spiritual values. The modern age is
> grossly materialistic and utilitarian, and above all atheistic; poets, if the evidence of the last
> century's poetry is to be trusted, cannot do without God. Baudelaire, the arch-defiant among
> nineteenth century poets in their alienation from society, could not live without believing in
> supernatural agencies.
> We have to remember this situation because no poetry of lasting significance is written
> independently of civilization and tradition. The poet is individual and subjective, but he is
> mankind's conscience. Mystically initiated to the divine order of things, he registers man's departure
> from his nobler nature and his higher ideals. As Schiller said, the poet keeps alive in man aims that
> are higher than the material. No wonder he has no place in a world given over to the most vulgar
> technological hunger, the crudest behaviouristic philosophies, and the most soulless social
> engineering.
> The dependence of the poet, in spite of his subjective nature, is very real. He requires not only
> an audience but a ground-work of shared values with those among whom he dwells. Cut off from
> this audience, above all cut off from a sustaining adherence to a generally-held social vision, the
> poet has no mooring and floats adrift in an amorphous, frightening ocean. Matthew Arnold
> expressed the dilemma of the detached nineteenth century poet:
> Still bent to make some port he knows not where,
> Still standing for some false, impossible shore.
> The Anglo-Saxon poet who composed Beowulf never knew such alienation when he sang
> before the assembled warriors the limited philosophy of valour and heroic death. The poet was in
> his place. So, one must suppose, was Petrarch in his medieval world and Tasso in his renaissance
> one. Neither did Shakespeare lack a patron or Milton a livelihood. Goethe too was esteemed at
> Weimar, and if Byron was a self-exile he still felt a link with the tradition of Pope, and Keats with
> that of Spenser. Arnold's desolation in isolation presaged the tragic ends of the poets of the fin de
> siěcle, of whom Yeats wrote:
> What portion in the world can the poet have
> Who has awakened from the common dream
> But dissipation and despair.
> There is thus a Church for the poet, as for the composer of music, and an apostolic succession
> of great ones to whom he feels indebted. And great epochs might consist of a handful of major
> talents: Marlowe, Jonson, Shakespeare, Webster, Fletcher and Middleton; Goethe, Schiller,
> Hólderlin, Novalis, Heine; Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn and
> Brahms. But in a barren age we can scarce name one master, let alone a succession of heirs.
> Must the Bahá’í poet be disconsolate then, along with other contemporary poets? Certainly he
> will make no idle claims, knowing the low cultural standards of his time. But Bahá’ís perhaps may
> partially escape the sense of vacuum most artists now feel. Bahá’ís live with that, but also maintain
> a transcendental vision. They are truly the heirs of the Romantic artists who sensed the dawning of
> the new age around 1800. They know what Richter was speaking of when he proclaimed:
> Infinite Providence, Thou wilt cause the day to dawn.
> We are aware that the sun has risen, yet still know ourselves to be 'children of the half- light'.
> Such a vision, though circumscribed, still looks to a future (a glorious one!) and, being
> transcendental, bears witness to an eternity. Bahá’ís once more have found man's place in endless
> time, regaining the organic awareness of the succession of epochs which Herder knew of.
> Moreover, whereas Herder and Fichte had caught a glimpse of God in the ever-unfolding revelation
> of history, Bahá’ís believe they are party to a knowledge of the Greater Revelation, the key to the
> whole progression. Bahá’u’lláh, the Greater Revelation, the Manifestation of God for this age,
> confirmed this knowledge of man's destiny when He said: All men have been created to carry
> forward an ever- advancing civilization.
> The transcendentalist sees across time and into eternity; for him the present is part of the
> whole. A Bahá’í poet may write poetry today knowing that it will be far surpassed by great Bahá’í
> poets to come, poets supported by a fully-developed philosophy and a world civilization rooted in a
> religious culture. But he who writes today, writing in humility, may still know he contributed his
> part to keeping the vision of poetry alive. If what he writes comes from an inspired heart it may still
> be of human value, and highly regarded by later generations, though its pure poetic value fail to
> match that of the great practitioners. For the poetic impulse, coming from the soul of men, is of
> universal interest to all men for all time. It is thus that we may still read today fragments from
> ancient poets and know that the pulse of poetry was yet alive in those times.
> We can therefore best advise the Bahá’í poet of today to hold to the great themes. The eternal
> themes in poetry pertain to the perpetual themes of life. Above all, the greatest is Love: Love for
> God, as it is to be found in, for example, Indian literature, and in Sufi poetry; Love for nature, and
> Love between human beings—how ubiquitous are these themes in the world's poetry.
> By keeping poetry alive, we bear witness to the divine impulse within and also enrich society
> by increasing other men's perception. Poetry is akin to the revealed Word, albeit infinitely lower in
> rank, being as all else de- pendent upon that; yet the poet also testifies that in the beginning was the
> Word, that man's speech is also a mark of his divine descent, and poetry the utterance of his deepest
> nature. Little wonder that poetry is so closely associated with religion, and that the Word of God is
> often sublime poetry.
> Surely, therefore, in the Baha'i community, poetry shall be accorded a very high place of
> distinction, far above any mean assessment of utility. Even in this era of committees, the province
> of the poet remains individual and inviolate. There shall be no danger of official demands for
> realism, or even quasi-romanticism. Plato's antagonism and the Prophet Muhammad's qualified
> consent that there was some truth in poetry are to be forgotten in the age of man's maturity. The
> Bahá’í poet is freed from restraint by virtue of the ideals to which his Faith calls him to aspire.
> Borne up by the moral vision of the Bahá’í Faith, we will not need to look for an evident
> didacticism, conscious moralizing or theologizing. There need be no pressure for adherence to the
> puritanical strain. For it remains true, in Yeats's words '. . . that life is greater than the cause . . . and
> we artists. . . are the servants not of any cause but of mere naked life, and above all of that life in its
> nobler forms, where joy and sorrow are one . . .’4 We do not associate the 'cause' referred to with
> God's Cause, the Bahá’í Cause, but perhaps only that cause with a small 'c' that men may make out
> of the Bahá’í Faith. Causes, movements of ideas, have in the past not infrequently become sterile in
> their adherence to abstractions; that is, ideas not lived and experienced. Ideas and beliefs are not
> worthy until they become part of life itself. Life in its mere naked form is what human beings
> actually experience, and poetry addresses itself essentially to personal experience. If the poet is to
> sing of life in its nobler forms he must have experienced or compassed imaginatively such realities.
> He must know the joy and suffering that are one, through his own sorrows. It is as though he is
> articulating the spiritual battles of Everyman. In these matters there can be no abstraction, no
> dogma. It was Milton who insisted that poets who wished to write heroic poems should first make
> of their lives heroic poems. Bahá’ís, following the advice of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, do not merely recite
> verses but strive to make their lives beautiful prayers. Poets must express what they believe not in
> theory but in the way they themselves, and others, have actually lived such belief.
> Belief is in continual need of revitalization through the influx of spiritual sensibility and the
> infusion of real experience touched by imagination. The poet is one who can advance this aim,
> alongside the efforts of others, and thus we reiterate his importance to the Bahá’í community. For
> fully accepted and approved, in this role he does become servant of the cause, which is life itself,
> the higher life that is to be, which man must have more abundantly.
> Profane imagery has been handled by the greatest poets, including Háfiz and Goethe; it has
> influenced the sacred, as in the case of the medieval lyric. The two English Puritan poets, Spenser
> and Milton, the most serious of poets both, were alive to the sensuous. Hatred of the world is not the
> poet's way; he must have water and clay as well as nightingales and roses. The Qur'anic paradise
> and the beloved's hair are natural images that the most Sacred of Voices have not disdained to use.
> At present then, the Bahá’í who writes poetry may find solace in the golden mines which have
> been worked by the great poets of the past. Like most literate poets he will read widely. His
> particular advantage is the inspiration of the themes, symbols and images to be found in the
> tradition of his Faith. He has both a tradition which is yet a new one, and a vision which is faced to
> the future. He may recall the potent influence of religion on previous literatures. In Hebrew
> literature poetry and religious inspiration are synonymous; the Indian languages have contributed a
> vital and varied literature to Hindu culture; and perhaps the most powerful example of religion
> wedded to literature is Islám and Arabic, which in turn fertilized the fields of Persian, Turkish and
> Urdu literature.
> These thoughts only underline the inevitability of an unimaginably resplendent range of
> literature in the mature Bahá’í civilization. What an inheritance does the Bahá’í poet share! We may
> be present at the beginning, but the prospect is vast. Here is not the place to prophesy as to the
> possible images future poets will invoke, poets who have immersed themselves in the ocean of the
> Bahá’í Writings. But lest it seem that I am content only with generalization, I would like to quote
> briefly from a living Bahá’í poet whose work possesses, in my estimation, a distinctive character.
> Roger White's poetry contains, as far as I can tell, many echoes from the tradition of English
> literature. He moves from the meditative, sometimes self-dissecting introspection of the seventeenth
> century Metaphysicals, through the light-hearted jeux d'esprits of the eighteenth, to the apparent
> disenchantment of the modern mind.
> We have a modern echo of John Donne:
> Come, let me fete you, beloved foe,
> for I tire of this old-born war.
> In stark contrast, we find the completely secular voice of the japing eighteenth century poet
> ostensibly berating a gourmand mistress:
> My deeper need you blithely slight,
> Love—not food—my appetite.
> And yet another volte-face reveals the sceptical conscience of the modern:
> When you heard that God had died, you wondered
> whether it was from sheer boredom—
> all that joyless music and our impudent prayers.
> I find in Roger White's variety of styles, moods and themes the unity of a distinctive poetic
> mind. His use of secular image and idiom is unabashed and unrepentant:
> Named by her past suitors' Akká, Ptolemais, St. Jean d'Acre,
> she is no beauty, this aged courtesan, meanly rouged by sun.
> Why did you do it, Keith?
> And you a looker.
> Freddie, you walked in
> with eyes as open as your heart,
> knew it to be the deal beyond compromise;
> survived the imagery
> accommodated to nightingales and roses.
> Here is the use of colloquial phrase and the profane conceit, but not merely for effect. We
> sense there is an ulterior purpose behind the use of bawdy image, accusatory line and worldly wit.
> This sense of controlling wisdom behind the open technical facility is in fact the secret to the
> appreciation of Roger White's intention as poet. His is a deeply human eye; hiding beneath the
> layers of burlesque and modernist world-weariness is a sorrowful and joyous delicacy of feeling.
> The heart of the quintessential pioneer—the grey-haired Bahá’í lady inveigling an innocent 'contact'
> into her Faith through her kindness and conviction—is penetrated. She would:
> . . . have shielded the hapless
> of Nagasaki, Warsaw, Buchenwald,
> with her own body, if she could.
> Long ago she wept and worked for causes not then named.
> But if he can celebrate the unknown Bahá’í, he can also give a jolting insight into the
> predicament of known saints. The much-loved Fujita, renowned Japanese Bahá’í, loving and
> devoted servant of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, emerges as a vulnerable, isolated man as opposed to the walking
> institution or sentimental relic:
> Acquitted of triviality by a pain and loneliness that might instruct us,
> rescued a halo's-breadth from isolating sainthood by an exonerating intolerance and his need
> for us,
> but still a holy man.
> That these lines suggest so much about ourselves as well as Fujita, as well as the poet's seeing,
> sensitive eye, is perhaps a mark of Roger White's range. On the surface eschewing didacticism like
> a plague, this poetry has 'much to say' because it requires the reader to look into himself. Do we
> confine to cruel isolation those we ostensibly canonize as living saints? Roger White sees the
> predicament of the real man but his poet's lens also captures in a flash something of his subject's
> character:
> mikado of mirth,
> the Servant's servant.
> This is real poetry then. It is not accommodating; it is often sardonic, questioning, not easily
> satisfied. But it carries a note of wisdom and acceptance too. We see a practising poet writing, not
> as a single-minded poet-laureate for the Bahá’í Cause, but a sensitized human being.
> But at a more obvious 'Bahá’í' level, Roger White's poetry suggests further points of
> departure. The heroes, heroines and history of the Bahá’í Faith are not invoked simplistically or
> meretriciously, nor do quotations from Scripture do the poet's work for him. When there is a
> quotation (he loves to borrow Shoghi Effendi's or the Universal House of Justice's epithets to crown
> remembered Bahá’í figures) it is to build an aura of pageant:
> Brilliant Keith! immortal Lua! steadfast Thornton!
> courageous Marion! incomparable Martha! constant Juliet!
> What is the purpose in this?
> I fashion a paean; to vanquish dread, invoke the victors.
> It is an answer, then, to personal need, as well as to celebrate past souls and the spirit that
> moved them. Roger White's poetry, while retaining the poet's individuality, yet leads us to hope for
> a Bahá’í tradition of poetry.
> 
> Notes
> 1. [footnote #1 repeated from top of first page in this PDF] This essay appears here in its original form. At
> the request of the Canadian Association for Studies on the Baha'i Faith it was subsequently
> revised for inclusion in vol. 7 of Baha'i Studies. See also 'The Heroic Soul and the Ordinary
> Self—a Study in the Religious Poetry of Roger White,' by Geoffrey Nash.
> 2. The Universal House of Justice, compilation 'Bahá’í Writings on Music', Bahá’í Publishing
> Trust, Oakham, England, p. II.
> 3 ibid.
> 4. W. B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions, New York, 1961 p. 260.
>
> — *Can There Be a Baha'i Poetry? (Used by permission of the curator)*