How it became manifest to the king that the physicians were unable to cure the handmaiden, and how he turned his face towards God and dreamed of a holy man.
When the king saw the powerlessness of those physicians, he ran bare-footed to the mosque.
He entered the mosque and advanced to the mihráb (to pray): the prayer-carpet was bathed in the king's tears.
On coming to himself out of the flood of ecstasy (faná) he opened his lips in goodly praise and laud,
Saying, “O Thou whose least gift is the empire of the world, what shall I say, in as much as Thou knowest the hidden thing?
O Thou with whom we always take refuge in our need, once again we have missed the way.
But Thou hast said, ‘Albeit I know thy secret, nevertheless declare it forthwith in thine outward act.’”
When from the depths of his soul he raised a cry (of supplication), the sea of Bounty began to surge.
Slumber overtook him in the midst of weeping: he dreamed that an old man appeared
And said, “Good tidings, O king! Thy prayers are granted. If to-morrow a stranger come for thee, he is from me.
When he comes, he is the skilled physician: deem him veracious, for he is trusty and true.
In his remedy behold absolute magic, in his temperament behold the might of God!”
When the promised hour arrived and day broke and the sun, (rising) from the east, began to burn the stars,
The king was in the belvedere, expecting to see that which had been shown mysteriously.
He saw a person excellent and worshipful, a sun amidst a shadow,
Coming from afar, like the new moon (in slenderness and radiance): he was nonexistent, though existent in the form of phantasy.
In the spirit phantasy is as naught, (yet) behold a world (turning) on a phantasy!
Their peace and their war (turn) on a phantasy, and their pride and their shame spring from a phantasy;
(But) those phantasies which ensnare the saints are the reflexion of the fair ones of the garden of God.
In the countenance of the stranger-guest was appearing that phantasy which the king beheld in his dream.
The king himself, instead of the chamberlains, went forward to meet his guest from the Invisible.
Both were seamen who had learned to swim, the souls of both were knit together without sewing.
The king said, “Thou wert my Beloved (in reality), not she; but in this world deed issues from deed.
O thou who art to me (as) Mustafá (Mohammed), while I am like unto ‘Umar—I will gird my loins to do thee service.”
