IX.Ṣūfī Poetry.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Hughes, Thomas Patrick
The very essence of Ṣūfīism is poetry, and the Eastern Mystics are never tired of expatiating on the ʿIshq, or “love to God,” which is the one distinguishing feature of Ṣūfī mysticism. The Mas̤nawī, which teaches in the sweetest strains that all nature abounds with love divine, that causes even the lowest plant to seek the sublime object of its desire; the works of the celebrated Jāmī, so full of ecstatic rapture; the moral lessons of the eloquent Saʿdī; and the lyric odes of Ḥāfiz̤, may be termed the Scriptures of the Ṣūfī sect; and yet each of these authors contains passages which are unfit for publication in an English dress, and advocate morals at variance with what Christianity teaches us to be the true reflection of God’s Holy Will. Whilst propriety demands the suppression of verses of the character alluded to, we give a few odes as specimens of the higher order of Ṣūfī poetry.
Jalālu ʾd-dīn ar-Rūmī, the author of the Mas̤nawī (A.H. 670), thus writes:—
“I am the Gospel, the Psalter, the Qurʾān;
I am ʿUzzā and Lāt—(Arabic deities)—Bell and the Dragon.
Into three and seventy sects is the world divided,
Yet only one God; the faithful who believe in Him am I.
Thou knowest what are fire, water, air and earth;
Fire, water, air, and earth, all am I.
Lies and truth, good, bad, hard and soft,
Knowledge, solitude, virtue, faith,
The deepest ground of hell, the highest torment of the flames,
The highest paradise,
The earth and what is therein,
The angels and the devils, Spirit and man, am I.
What is the goal of speech, O tell it Shams Tabrīzī?
The goal of sense? This:—The world Soul am I.”
* * *
And again:—
“Are we fools? We are God’s captivity.
Are we wise? We are His promenade.
Are we sleeping? We are drunk with God.
Are we waking? Then we are His heralds.
Are we weeping? Then His clouds of wrath.
Are we laughing? Flashes of His love.”
* * *
“Every night God frees the host of spirits;
Frees them every night from fleshly prison.
Then the soul is neither slave nor master;
Nothing knows the bondsman of his bondage;
Nothing knows the lord of all his lordship.
Gone from such a night, is eating sorrow;
Gone, the thoughts that question good or evil.
Then without distraction, or division,
In this One the spirit sinks and slumbers.”
The following is from the mystic poet Maḥmūd:—
“All sects but multiply the I and Thou;
This I and Thou belong to partial being.
When I and Thou, and several being vanish,
Then mosque and church shall find Thee nevermore.
Our individual life is but a phantom;