The Masnavi, Book One (Oxford World's Classics)

The crow’s attack on the claim of the hoopoe
On hearing this, the crow rose jealously
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To claim the hoopoe spoke dishonestly:
‘It’s rude to speak to kings in such false ways,
More so to lie absurdly in self-praise:
If she could see that from beyond the sky
How come that snare had still escaped her eye
How a Hare Killed the Tyrannical Lion
77

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In which she was entrapped so easily?
How come she stepped inside unwittingly?’
Solomon asked, ‘Well, hoopoe is this true,
Are dregs in the 
first glass I’m served by you?
You’ve drunk mere yoghurt, don’t claim that you’re high!
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The boasts you made before me were a lie!’
The hoopoe answers the criticism of the crow
She said, ‘Though I’m a beggar, poor and bare,
Don’t listen to the things my foes declare,
If you consider false the words I’ve said
Here is my neck –– feel free to chop my head!
The crow who would deny that God’s will rules
Rejects faith, though she’s studied in great schools:
If you don’t have an ounce of faithfulness
You’re like the crotch of lust and 
filthiness!
I see all snares, while 
flying in the skies
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If fate does not deny them to my eyes:
When fate decrees our brain sleeps in its spell,
The sun’s eclipsed, the moon turns black as well;
It’s not so strange that fate should thus decree,
Fate too wills your denial of destiny.’
The story of Adam: destiny blinded his sight, so that he failed to
observe the message, and to refrain from interpreting it di
fferently
He taught the Names
* to Adam at the start,
Thus knowledge 
filled our ancestor’s pure heart,
The names of things, which showed how they’d turn out
Were granted to his soul to rid all doubt;
Each name that he’d assign would therefore last,
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What he called ‘slow’ did not then turn out fast,
The faithful at the end of time he knew
And those who’d turn out unbelievers too ––
So learn the names of things as He decrees,
He taught the Names holds all the mysteries.
How a Hare Killed the Tyrannical Lion
78

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Our names for things convey the way they’re seen,
Their inner natures are what God’s names mean,
For Moses simply called his stick ‘a rod’,
*
While ‘snake’ was what had been assigned by God;
‘Omar’ meant polytheist once in the past,
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Although it meant ‘believer’ at Alast;
*
Our names are like a seed that’s just been sown,
Before God is the fruit that’s
finally grown;
In non-existence seeds are just a form,
Existent with the Lord, they must transform,
And in the end our names from God dictate
How we will truly be and what’s our fate:
He names men thus according to their end
While for their present state a name He’ll lend.
When Adam gained the light of purity
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He then perceived souls and reality,
God’s light in him when angels could observe
They fell prostrate and vowed that they would serve!
If I recount the virtues of this sun
The end of time will come before I’m done,
But though he was so wise, when fate decreed
One prohibition Adam failed to heed:
‘Is this to be forbidden? That seems odd!
Or is interpreting allowed by God?’
Since he tried to interpret on his own
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He couldn’t leave forbidden fruit alone,
Like when a gardener stepped upon a thorn:
A thief snatched all his things and then was gone,
The gardener soon calmed down and found relief,
But saw his tools were stolen by the thief.
‘