Beware, Joseph of the fair name, come not on the road without a fellow traveler; break not away from the Jacob of wisdom lest you fall into a well.
He is a dog who sleeps idly before every door; and he is an ass who comes helplessly to every tent.
See from what side this love and envy enter the breast; do you know who informs the heart but a heart-cherisher?
Wait like a bird guardian over the egg, for from the breast’s egg will be born drunkenness and union and laughter.
Only he has a skirt; all are beggars, uncle—clutch with both your hands his royal skirt.
Like the sun go in grief for him into the fire till night; when it is night, gently turn about his roof like the moon.
On his roof these stars are keeping watch till dawn; by Allah, what a blessed presence, what an imperial court!
Those prophets who even in the earth turned their faces to heaven escaped from the snare of earth and the company of every fool;
They were snatched by that side like iron by a magnet, like a straw which flies without wings to amber.
Know that without His sending down no provision grows in the earth, without the society of His guiding form no substance can come into being.
The spirits are excited like camels by the cry, “Travel!”—like a Bedouin He cries, “Forward!” to those camels.
On the table of the heart the soothsayer casts the sand divination realities, so that through His figures the sand has become fine gold and pure.
Go more gaily, fellow travelers, for a physician has come into the world who brings to life every dead one, gives sight to all who are blind.
All these things come to pass; but when his face lifts the veil, no Venus or melody remains, no “woe, woe” to the mourner.
Be silent, if you are a nightingale, go, fly back to the rosebush; the bolbol goes to the thornbed, but only rarely, from time to time.
