Employ all thy efforts to be agreeable to drinkers, and follow the good counsel of Khayyam. O friend! demolish the bases of prayer and of fasting, drink wine, steal if you will, but do good. 328. Justice is the soul of the universe, the universe is the body. The angels are the wit of the body, the heavens the elements, the creatures in it are the members; behold here the eternal unity. The rest is only trumpery. 329. Yesterday evening, in the tavern, the object of my heart that ravishes my soul [God] presented me a cup with a ravishing air of sincerity and a desire to please me, inviting me to drink. No, said I to him, I will not drink. Drink, he answered me, for the love of my heart. 330. Do you wish the universe to submit itself to your will? Occupy yourself without ceasing in fortifying your soul. Share my mood, which consists in drinking wine and never taking to myself the cares of things here below. 331. The sages who have well considered this world of dust, this sojourn of inconstancy from one end to the other, see nothing in it agreeable but wine in ruby cups and beautiful countenances. 332. Thanks to the iniquity of this Wheel of Heaven which resembles a mirror, thanks to the periodic motion of time which accords its favors only to the most abject, my cheeks, hollowed like a cup, are bathed in tears; but, like a flask, my heart is full of blood. 333. Yesterday [before day], in company with a charming friend and a cup of rose-colored wine, I was seated on the border of a brook. Before me stood the cup, that shell, of which the pearl [contained in the cup] shed such a brilliant light that the herald of the sun, awaking with a start, announced the Dawn. 334. Forget the day which has been cut off from thy existence; disturb not thyself about to-morrow, which has not yet come; rest not upon that which is or that which is no more; live happily one instant and throw not thy life to the winds. 335. Art not ashamed to give thyself to corruption?--to neglect thus both what is commanded and what is forbidden? Even if you succeed in appropriating all the goods of the earth to yourself, what can you do with them except to abandon them in your turn? 336. I have seen a man betake himself to sterile soil. He was neither a heretic nor a Musulman; he had neither riches nor religion, nor God, nor truth, nor law, nor certitude. Who in this world or in the other would have so much courage? 337. One host of men is pondering upon belief, or on the faith; others are hovering between doubt and certainty. But suddenly behind the veil there's one will cry: O ignorant ones! the way that you seek is neither here nor there! 338.