غزل شمارهٔ 232

If you do not know Love, question the nights, ask of the pale cheek and the dryness of the lips.

Just as the water relates about the stars and the moon, even so the physical forms relate about intellect and spirit.

From Love the soul learns a thousand manners of culture, such culture as cannot be found from schools.

Amongst a hundred persons, the lover stands out as plain as the shining moon in heaven amid the stars.

The mind, though it be apprised of all the doctrines of the sects, knows nothing and is bewildered by the doctrine of Love.

The man who has a heart like Khid.ar, who has quaffed the water of life of Love—to such a one the most limpid fountains are nothing worth.

Toil not in the garden; behold within the soul of the lover Damascus and Gh¯ut.a, rosebowers and all Nairab.

What is Damascus? For that is a paradise full of angels and houris; minds are amazed at those cheeks and rounded chins.

Its delectable wine does not produce vomiting and cropsickness, the sweetness of its halva does not give rise to boils and fevers.

All men, from king to beggar, are in the tug of appetite; Love delivers the soul out of all appetites and desires.

What pride does Love take in its purchasers? What sort of a prop are foxes to the lion?

Upon the datepalm of the world I do not discover one ripe date, for all my teeth have been blunted by unripe dates.

Fly on the wings of Love in the air and to the skies, be exempt like the sun from the need of all riding-beasts.

Lovers’ hearts do not experience loneliness like simples, they have no fear of severance and separation like compounds.

Providence chose Love for the sake of the souls, the Cause purchased Love out of all things caused.

Love’s deputy entered the breast of the Cadi of K¯ab, so that his heart should shy from giving judgment and such prattle.

What a world! What rare arrangement and ordering, that casts a thousand confusions into well-ordered things!

Beggar of Love, for all the joys that the world contains, reckon that Love is the gold-mine, and those things but gilded.

Love, you have filched my heart by trickery and cunning; you lied—God forfend!—but sweetly and charmingly.

I desire to mention you, Love, with gratitude; but I am distraught with you, and my thought and reason are confused.

Were I to praise Love in a hundred thousand languages, Love’s beauty far surpasses all such stammerings.