The Persian Mystics: Jalálu'd-dín Rúmí

Rumi · en
This is the Lord of Heaven, who resembles Venus and the moon,
    This is the House of Love, which has no bound or end.
    Like a mirror, the soul has received Thy image in its heart;
    The tip of Thy curl has sunk into my heart like a comb.
    Forasmuch as the women cut their hands in Joseph's presence,
    Come to me, O soul, for the Beloved is in the midst.




    LOVE'S DESIRE

    Show Thy face, for I desire the orchard and the rose-garden;
    Ope Thy lips, for I desire sugar in plenty.
    O sun, show forth Thy face from the veil of cloud,
    For I desire that radiant glowing countenance.




    THE FINDING OF THE BELOVED

    I was on that day when the Names were not,
    Nor any sign of existence endowed with name,
    By me Names and Named were brought to view
    On the day when there was not "I" and "We,"
    For a sign, the tip of the Beloved's curl became a centre of
        revelation;
    As yet the tip of that curl was not.
    Cross and Christians, from end to end,
    I surveyed; He was not on the Cross.
    I went to the idol-temple, to the ancient pagoda;
    No trace was visible there.
    I went to the mountains of Herāt and Candahār;
    I looked; He was not in that hill-and-dale.
         * * * * * * * *¨* * * * * * *
    I gazed into my own heart;
    There I saw Him; He was nowhere else.




    GOD ONLY

    "None but God has contemplated the beauty of God."
    This eye and that lamp are two lights, each individual,
    When they came together, no one distinguished them.




    THE MOON-SOUL AND THE SEA

    At morning-tide a moon appeared in the sky,
    And descended from the sky and gazed on me.
    Like a falcon which snatches a bird at the time of hunting,
    That moon snatched me up and coursed over the sky.
    When I looked at myself, I saw myself no more,
    Because in that moon my body became by grace even as soul.
    When I travelled in soul, I saw naught save the moon,
    Till the secret of the Eternal Theophany was revealed.
    The nine spheres of heaven were all merged in that moon,
    The vessel of my being was completely hidden in the sea.
    The sea broke into waves, and again Wisdom rose
    And cast abroad a voice; so it happened and thus it befell.
    Foamed the sea, and at every foam-fleck
    Something took figure and something was bodied forth.
    Every foam-fleck of body, which received a sign from that sea,
    Melted straightway and turned to spirit in this Ocean.




    LIFE IN DEATH