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LibriVox volunteers bring you 7 recordings of New Year Greeting by Louise R. Waite . This was the Weekly Poetry project for March 21st, 2010.,
The 21st of March is the ancient Persian festival of Naw-Rúz, also spelled "Noruz" (New Day) which is the Iranian and Zoroastrian New Year's Day. Naw-Rúz is also a Bahá'í holy day and the Baha'i New Year.
Louise R. Waite (nee Spencer) was a Bahá'í poet and song writer. She wrote this poem, entitled “New Year Greeting”, for Naw-Rúz, which appeared in the Bahai Bulletin, Vol. 1. January-February-March, 1909, No. 5. According to an article which appeared in the same issue of the Bahai Bulletin: “Each Prophet or Manifestation of God, when he comes to the world, founds a new dispensation, a new time, for his followers…. To-day those who believe in Baha’u’llah, are establishing the Bahai time. It establishes a new method of reckoning… The New Year begins on the twenty-first of March, in accord with the teachings of our Revelator…”
Referring to one of Waite’s poems in 1902, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote: “All poems shall be forgotten in the course of time save those that are extraordinary. Thy poems shall be chanted with melody and best voices in the center of Worship (Mashriqu'l-Adhkár) forevermore.” In one Tablet, He referred to her as “Thou bird of pleasing tones” and in another as “Thou eloquent and expressive poetess”. On the 15th of April 1902, she married Edgar F. Waite. In 1910, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gave her the spiritual name of Shahnáz Khánum (Lady Shahnáz). Shahnáz passed away in her sleep on the 27th of May 1939. (Summary by Nicholas James Bridgewater)