The inconsolable Nabíl, who had had the privilege of a
private audience with Bahá’u’lláh during the days of His illness; whom
‘Abdu’l-Bahá had chosen to select those passages which constitute the text of
the Tablet of Visitation now recited in the Most Holy Tomb; and who, in his
uncontrollable grief, drowned himself in the sea shortly after the passing of
his Beloved, thus describes the agony of those days: “Methinks, the spiritual
commotion set up in the world of dust had caused all the worlds of God to
tremble.... My inner and outer tongue are powerless to portray the condition we
were in.... In the midst of the prevailing confusion a multitude of the inhabitants
of Akká and of the neighboring villages, that had thronged the fields
surrounding the Mansion, could be seen weeping, beating upon their heads, and
crying aloud their grief.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
