You who are my soul’s repose in the time of pain, you who are my spirit’s treasure in the bitterness of poverty,
That which imagination never conceived, reason and understanding never perceived, has entered my soul from you; therefore to you alone I turn in worship.
Through your grace I gaze boldly upon eternal life; O king, how should a perishing empire beguile me?
The melody of that person who brings me glad tidings of you, even if it be in sleep, is better than all poets’ songs to me.
In the genuflections of prayer your image, O king, is as necessary and obligatory to me as the seven oft-repeated verses.
When unbelievers sin, you are all compassion and intercession; to me you are the chief and leader of the stonyhearted.
If everlasting bounty should offer all kingdoms and place before me every hidden treasure,
I would prostrate myself with all my soul and lay my face on the earth, I would say, “Out of all these, the love of a certain one for me!”
For me the time of union is eternal life, for in that moment no time contains me.
Life is a vessel, and in it union is a pure wine; without you, of what avail to me is the labour of the vessels?
Before this, twenty thousand desires were mine; in my passion for him, not one single aspiration has remained to me.
Through the succour of his grace, I have become secure from the Monarch of the Unseen saying to me, Thou shalt not see me.
The essence of the meaning of “He” my heart and soul has filled; he is—even though he said he is not—the third and the second to me.
Union with him transported my spirit; my body paid not attention, though disengaged from the body he became visible to me.
I have become old in grief for him; but when you name Tabriz, all my youth returns.
