Translations
This page shows only poems with translations by M. Hadi Husain.
Payam-e Mashriq by Allama Iqbal, in translations by M. Hadi Husain
Stranger it was, nor faithfulness did know, its gaze was restless, searching to and fro:
Speak not of Love, and of Love’s wizardry: Whatever shape thou wilt, he doth descend:
Sweet newborn bud, why art thou so forlorn? What seekest thou within this garden fair?
My talk is with the songsters of the glade; the tongue of tongueless rosebuds I was made.
This vale of roses, is it as it seems? What makes the tulip’s fiery heart to glow?
I am a circling planet; Thou my sun, the light that bathes me by Thy glance is thrown:
Sweet is His image in my sight to stay, sweeter His love, my life to steal away:
A girdled infidel, this brain of mine, it worships idols of its own design:
The free-paced fir His bondslave was before, fire in the rose’s cheek His wine did pour.
A hundred worlds stretched star to farthest star. Where’er the mind soared, there the heavens are.
Set not the chain of Fate upon thy foot; there is a way beyond this rolling sphere.
The heaved breath is a beaker of His sea; He lips our reed, and plays our melody.
There is one pain that tortureth Thy breast: Thou madest this world of colours and of scents.
We are not Afghans, Turks or Tartars: Offspring of the garden, we grew from the same bough.
One who has been blessed with no secret grief may have a body, but has not a soul.
With all Thy glory, Thou the veil dost wear. The passion of our gaze Thou canst not bear;
Forget the goal, be steadfast on the path, keep bright your vision like the sun and moon.
Come, O Love, guarded secret of our hearts, come, O our sowing and our harvesting.
Speech bringeth pain and grief – so best it were; this long lament to me is lovelier.
I have no swift-paced steed to ride upon; I am no courtier of a monarch’s son;
Wouldst thou the perfect life attain? Then learn on self alone to fix the opened eye;
Wine am I, or the bowl where it doth lie? Pearl, or the bosom it is treasured by?
Thou sayest, ‘Lo, our bird is in the snare, no more shall he stretch wings and fly in air’;
Declare: how in the heart is born desire, how in the dwelling burns the lantern’s fire.
The roving heart likes not at borne to stay, to be contained in water, fire, and clay;
Come drink in Nature’s beauty with your eyes. Why muse like a recluse?
Eschewing Plato and Farabi! Observed the world of sense with my own eye.
The origins of selfhood no man knows, to dawn and eve no fellowship it owes.
In the narcissus bed a bud did rise, the dew of dawn washed slumber from its eyes.
The Rose and I one problem have to tell; we both are seized by the assembly’s spell;
The self-sown tulip’s temper I know well, within the stem the roses’ scent I smell;
One song of yearning fills the world entire; this yearning strings the universal lyre;
My heart is all the yearning of unrest, tumult and agitation fill my breast;
Unceasing restlessness is life for us. Like a fish we must always remain mobile.
O preacher if the Brahmin asks that we bow down to idols, then why should you be displeased?
Philosophers break idols in their wrath, but still are prisoners of Being’s Somnath.
Worlds spring like grain from my handful of clay.come share my harvest.
With Nature my relations are age-old. I gave myself up to it heart and soul.
Winging Eternity’s uncharted space, still an unbodied spirit, I was caught.
I boast, I am a beggar without need; I shake, I burn, I melt; I play my reed.
If you know your potentialities, then with the dew you are create vast seas.
Why sorrowest thou? The heart lives not by breath; it is not chained to Being and to Death.
On my behalf tell the pure-hearted Sufis; those seekers after God and possessors of the truth:
Do not pass through this garden with eyes closed narcissus-like, and do not like scent keep.
After my likeness I an image made: I bound on God the fashion that I wore:
Thus spake the new-sprung blossom to the dew: ‘We meadow children have no piercing eye:
Take earth to be the confidante of Heaven and space a gloss upon infinity.
You are the meaning of God’s fait, ‘Be’, the only clue to Being’s mystery.
The earth is mere dust at our tavern’s door, the sky our wine-cup going round, no more.