XI. The Lion’s Hunt, in Company.
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Jalal al-Din Rumi, Maulana and Redhouse, James W. (James William), Sir
My pleasure’s, for you both, what you should seek to know;
Not calculate beforehand what I may bestow.
Your every thought should but reflect my sovereign will,
And thankfully await what I may give you still.
Have pictures aught to say to guide the artist’s hand?
His cunning ’tis decides what portrait shall expand.
So all your paltry surmise of my royal mind
An insult is,—an arrogance,—that must be fined.25
‘They who conceive an evil thing of God’333 are cursed;
And if I spare you, justice will be clean reversed.
To rid the world of scandal, I must end your lives;
Your story shall a moral point; whoe’er contrives.”
With this he smiled again most grimly on the pair.
Trust not a lion’s smile, all ye to live who care.
The riches of the world are smiles of Providence;
They make men proud, and lead them to their fate prepense.
Through poverty and suffering we may escape
The trap that riches bait; and so avoid the scrape.30
The lion now addressed the wolf: “Share out the spoil.
Do justice to us all. Thou’rt versed in cunning’s foil.
Be thou my factor. Carve the game as may be fit.
So shalt thou honour win from all who see thy wit.”
The wolf then: “Royal Sir, the mountain-ox is thine.
Thou’rt great; the ox is large and fat; let none repine.
The ibex is my share. As I, so it’s the mean.
And thou, O fox, shalt have the hare. ’Tis not too lean.”
The lion interposed: “Wolf! What is this thou’st said?
I present; and to talk of ‘thou’ and ‘I,’ so staid!35
What rubbish is a wolf, to deem himself a judge
In presence of a lion, who’ll soon make him budge?
Come hither, ass! Thyself alone it is thou’st sold!”
With this he tears the wolf to pieces, all too bold.
He saw the wolf had not one grain of common sense;
So stripped him of his hide, his life, his brain so dense.
Then said: “Since sight of me chased not all thought of self
From thee, death by my paw was due, thou wretched elf!
Thyself thou shouldst have vanquished in my presence dread.
Not having done so, thou’rt now numbered with the dead.”40
“All perisheth, except His counsel” ’s holy writ.334
If we’re not of “His counsel,” life cannot us fit.