Selected Poems of Rumi

Jalalu'l-Din Rumi

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486153735
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Poetry
• Index: Literature

In recent years the stirring, unforgettable poetry of Jalālu’l-Dīn Rūmī (1207–1273), the great Sūfi teacher and the greatest mystical poet of Iran, has gained tremendous popularity in the western world. Although he died over 700 years ago, his poetry is timeless. In the best modern translations, the passion and playfulness of his words reach across the ages to communicate themselves to people today with an undiluted fervor and excitement.
Rūmī produced an enormous body of work — as many as 2, 500 mystical odes, 25, 000 rhyming couplets, and 1, 600 quatrains — some of it instructional, some personal and emotional, much of it sublimely beautiful. The present volume includes over 100 of his finest lyrics, including "The Marriage of True Minds, " "The Children of Light, " "The Man who Looked Back on his way to Hell, " "The Ascending Soul, " "The Pear-Tree of Illusion, " "The Riddles of God, " and many more.
"In some of these poems, " says A. J. Arberry in the Introduction, "the mystic's passion is so exuberant, his imagination so overflowing, that we catch glimpses of the very madness of Divine experience."

PRELUDE¹

Deep in our hearts the Light of Heaven is shining

Upon a soundless Sea without a shore.

Oh, happy they who found it in resigning

The images of all that men adore.

Blind eyes, to dote on shadows of things fair

Only at last to curse their fatal lure,

Like Harut and Marut, that Angel-pair

Who deemed themselves the purest of the pure.

Our ignorance and self-will and vicious pride

Destroy the harmony of part and whole.

In vain we seek with lusts unmor tified

A vision of the One Eternal Soul.

Love, Love alone can kill what seemed so dead,

The frozen snake² of passion. Love alone,

By tearful prayer and fiery longing fed,

Reveals a knowledge schools have never known.

God’s lovers learn from Him the secret ways

Of Providence, the universal plan.

Living in Him, they ever sing His praise

Who made the myriad worlds of Time for Man.

Evil they knew not, for in Him there’s none;

Yet without evil how should good be seen?

Love answers: “Feel with me, with me be one;

Where I am, naught stands up to come between.”

There are degrees of Heavenly Light in souls:

Prophets and Saints have shown the Path they trod,

Its starting points and stages, halts and goals,

All leading to the single end in God.

Love will not let his faithful servants tire,

Immortal Beauty draws them on and on

From glory unto glory, drawing nigher

At each remove and loving to be drawn.

When Truth shines out words fail and nothing tell;

Now hear the Voice within your hearts. Farewell.

¹This is not a translation — it has no original text behind it. I wrote to please myself, but seeing that it brings together some of Rūmīs characteristic ideas in a simple and compendious form, I think it may well serve as an overture to the present work.

²The “frozen snake,” or dragon, which symbolizes the carnal soul, is never so dangerous as when it pretends to have been utterly subdued and crushed. In the Mathnawī Rūmī relates how a hunter discovered this monstrous creature half buried in snow. To all appearance it had been killed by the intense frost. He conveyed it to Baghdad, opened a public show, and announced that on payment of a small fee it might be viewed by any one whose curiosity it excited. Spectators came in crowds, but now the season had changed. Reviving under the fierce heat of a Mesopotamian summer, the dragon began to uncoil. The ensuing havoc and slaughter were terrible to see.

I.
THE SONG OF THE REED¹

Hearken to this Reed forlorn,

Breathing, even since ‘twas torn

From its rushy bed, a strain

Of impassioned love and pain.

“The secret of my song, though near,

None can see and none can hear.

Oh, for a friend to know the sign²

And mingle all his soul with mine!

’Tis the flame of Love that fired me,

’Tis the wine of Love inspired me.

Wouldst thou learn how lovers bleed,

Hearken, hearken to the Reed!”

¹Math. I, 1. The opening lines of the poem strike a keynote that recurs insistently throughout. The Persian reed-flute (nay) has always been associated with the religious services of the Mathnawī Order, in which music and dancing are prominent features. Rūmī uses it as a symbol for the soul emptied of self and filled with the Divine spirit. This blessed soul, during its life on earth, remembers the union with God which it enjoyed in eternity and longs ardently for deliverance from the world where it is a stranger and exile.

²i.e. a soul of its own kind. Only the mystic understands the mystic.

II.
REMEMBERED MUSIC¹

’Tis said, the pipe and lute that charm our ears

Derive their melody from rolling spheres;²

But Faith, o’erpassing speculation’s bound,

Can see what sweetens every jangled sound.³

We, who are parts of Adam, heard with him

The song of angels and of seraphim.

Our memory, though dull and sad, retains

Some echo still of those unearthly strains.

Oh, music is the meat of all who love,

Music uplifts the soul to realms above.

The ashes glow, the latent fires increase:

We listen and are fed with joy and peace.

¹Math. IV, 733.

²The well-known theory of Pythagoras is almost a commonplace in Moslem philosophy and poetry. According to the Pure Brethren (Ikhwānu ’l-safā) of Basra, “since the celestial spheres revolve and the planets and stars are moved, it follows that they must have musical notes and expressions with which God is glorified, delighting the souls of the angels, just as in the corporeal world our souls listen with delight to melodies and obtain relief from care and sorrow. And inasmuch as these melodies are but echoes of heavenly music, they recall to us the spacious gardens of Paradise and the pleasures enjoyed by the souls dwelling there; and then our souls long to fly up thither and rejoin their mates.”

³Sufls associate the spiritual influence of music with the pre-existence of the soul. While listening, they hear again the Voice of God to which all human souls responded in eternity (Qur’ān VII, 171) and the anthems of the Heavenly Host.

III.
LOVE IN ABSENCE¹

How should not I mourn, like night, without His day and the favour of His ...