Chapter III: On the Ecstasy of Pious People, and its Truth and Folly

If a lover you are, keep yourself less in view ;If you're not; then, Futurity's pathway pursue!Lest love should reduce you to dust, do not fear !For should it destroy, you'll immortal appear.Green plants do not grow from the grains that are sound,Unless they are first covered up in the ground.With God such abundance of friendship you gain,That release from the hands of yourself you obtain.You've no road in yourself, while to self you are wed ;The enraptured alone are informed on this head.Not the minstrel alone, but the horse's hoof's soundIs music, if rapture within you is found.To the lover distracted a fly comes not nigh,For he beats at his head with his hands like a fly.Bass and treble are one to a crazed lover's ear ;At a bird's cheerful singing, laments the Fakir!The minstrel himself does not stop in his strain ;But he cannot, at all times, a hearing obtain.When rapturous men are adorers of wine,At a water-wheel's sound they to rapture incline.They circle and dance, like a watering wheel,And like water-wheels, weep on themselves a great deal.In submission, their heads 'neath their collars they bear ;When endurance remains not, their collars they tear.What the song is, oh brother ! to you I'll explain,If I know who the person is hearing the strain !If his flight be from spirituality's dome,To the height of his soaring no angel can roam.And if he be mirthful and playful and vain,His follies become more confirmed in his brain.What adorer of lust in pure songs will rejoice?Those asleep, not the drunk, rise to hear a fine voice!By the breeze of the morning expands the sweet rose—Not firewood, which only an axe can unclose.The Earth's full of melody, drunk'ness and cries;And yet, in a glass, what see men without eyes?Find not fault with a Dervish, bewildered and drunk ;He with hands and feet struggles because he has sunk.At the Arab's ha-da-ing the camel, you see,Goes dancing along in the greatest of glee.Since the rapture of mirth in a camel is shown,If 'tis not in a man, as an ass he is known.