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

Chief of the bedouins,’ they then enquired,
‘Where are you from, are you not feeling tired?’
He said, ‘I’m just a chief if you decree
But helpless if you turn your backs to me;
Your faces have the mark of eminence,
2790
Than Ja

far’s gold* you’ve more magnificence;
One glimpse of you, to me, is worth much more,
Your pure faith 
flings such coins across the floor,
You who can 
see by God’s light
* everything,
Who’ve come now to grant favours from the king,
To glance and thus perform his alchemy
On copper heads of humans just like me.
A stranger, from the desert I’ve arrived
In hope of royal grace, to be revived:
His grace’s scent 
fills deserts like small holes,
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Thus even grains of sand gain their own souls!
I came here for some gold originally
But I’ve become drunk with what I now see.’
A man rushed to the bakery for bread,
But saw the baker’s beauty and dropped dead!
He went just to admire the roses, but
He found the gardener more immaculate;
And at the village well in water’s place
One drew the Draught of Life from Joseph’s face;
*
To watch a 
fire when Moses went one day––
2800
He managed to escape from hell this way;
*
Jesus jumped up to 
flee the enemy––
That jump took him to heaven instantly!
*
The Poor Bedouin and his Wife
171

---

Forbidden fruit trapped Adam, as decreed,
His being turned then to Mankind’s
first seed;
For food the falcon stepped into a snare
And found the king’s wrist and good fortune there;
A boy agreed to go to school to learn,
His father’s promised gift this way to earn ––
There he became so clever very soon
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By working hard, just like a bright full moon;
A war of vengeance Abbas came to wage
Against the true religion of the age,
But he and his descendants then became
The prop of faith for centuries all the same.
*
‘I came here for some pro
fit and relief,
Inside the gates I then became a chief,
Water I brought in order to gain bread,
To paradise this search for food has led.’
Bread led to Adam’s fall –– what a huge price!
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But food has settled me in paradise!
From food and drink, release I now have found,
Like heavens, at this court I whirl around;
In this world nothing moves but through desire
Except such lovers whose hearts are on 
fire.
The lover of this world is like someone who loves a wall on which
sunlight shines and makes no e
ffort to understand that this
radiance and splendour do not come from the wall but from
the sun in the fourth heaven. Consequently, he sets his
heart on the wall completely, and, when the rays
of sunshine move with the sun he is left deprived
forever: ‘A gulf is 
fixed between them and
what they desire’
*
Some love the Whole and some love just a part,
The latter from the Whole are kept apart;
The one who loves a part soon also learns
That his beloved to the Whole returns:
Another’s slave has made him look a clown ––
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He’s clung to someone weak for fear he’d drown!
The Poor Bedouin and his Wife
172

---

He has no power with which he can help you,
His lord and master’s business he must do.
The Arabic proverb: ‘If you fornicate, do it with a free
woman; if you steal, steal a pearl!’
*
They say: ‘
With a free woman fornicate!’
And ‘