V. The Lion and the Beasts.
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Jalal al-Din Rumi, Maulana and Redhouse, James W. (James William), Sir
That name of Ahmed covers all the prophets still;160
As hundred, when ’tis said, ninety includes as well.
Reflections such as these would never have an end.
So turn we through our hare and lion’s tale to wend.
The hare but slowly towards the lion took his way.
Wiles in his brain he hatched; weighed what he had to say.
Procrastination served him his design to fill;
He’d secrets, one or two, the royal mind to still.
How many worlds there are that hang on wisdom’s worth.
How vast an ocean wisdom! Compasses the earth.225
A shoreless ocean is the subtle mind of man
A fearless diver sounds its depths; as who else can?
Our bodies drift about in mind’s strong eddies still,
Like basins on the water, at the stream’s sole will.
Until they fill, they float like bowls, on ocean’s brink;
And, like the bowls, when full, they cannot choose but sink.
The wind’s invisible; a world without, we see.
Our bodies are the waves or drops of that vast sea.
Whatever means our bodies seek to grasp, anon,
A billow drives it far; no sooner seen than gone.230
Until our hearts perceive the Giver of all good,
The swiftly-flying bolt shot far from o’er the flood,
They hold their coursers to be lost; and out of spite,
They push their roadsters hastily, as thoughts invite.
They hold their coursers to be lost; and all the while
Like noble courser, roadster’s borne them many a mile.
They now begin to wail, distress’d, and ask the way.
They knock at ev’ry door they see, they beg, they pray:
“The stealer of our courser was a little child.
What horse is this, my master? Seems it not too wild?”235
“O yes, a horse it is; but not the horse you want.
Come to your senses, man; to some one else go chant.”
The soul is void of patency and fellowship.
Thou, like a wine-jar, full within, hast parched lip.
How shouldst thou e’er distinguish red from green or brown,
When these are all the colours unto thee well known?
And when thy mind is dazed by colour’s magic round,
All colour’s lost in one bright light diffused around.
Those colours, too, all vanish from our view by night.
We learn from this, that colour’s only seen through light.240