Chapter VII: On the Ill-natured Remarks of Worldly People

If on Earth to escape from the world one's allowed,It is he who has fastened his door on the crowd.From the tyrannous hand of the times, none is free,Whether boaster or servant of God he may be.If you come from the sky, like an angel, on wings,To the skirt of your garment your enemy clings.You can stem by exertion the Tigris swift flow,But you cannot make silent the tongue of a foe.Vile profligates seated together declare :"This devotion is dry, that a bread-getting snare !"From God's holy worship avert not your face !Let the people alone! lest they count you as base.When the pure, holy God with His servant is pleased,What matter though men should remain unappeased?No knowledge of God has the people's vile foe;From the din of the world he God's path cannot know.For this reason those reached not the goal they essayed,That the first step they travelled, a false step they made !To the words of the Prophet two persons give ear ;They as diff'rent as angels from devils appear ;One accepts the advice and the other declines ;He heeds not the text, from decrying the lines.Dejected and in a dark corner shut up,What can he obtain from the world-seeing cup?And were you a tiger or fox, don't suppose,That by courage or tricks you'd escape from these foes!If a person the nook of retirement should choose—Because with small favour he company views—They defame him and call it mere canting and lies;That from people, as if from the Devil, he flies.And if he be friendly and jovial-faced,They do not consider him temp'rate and chaste.The skin of the rich they by backbiting flay;If a Pharaoh's on Earth, "This is he !" they will say.If an indigent man is in poverty stuck,They say it's from sinning and badness of luck.If a prosperous man tumbles down from his place,A boon they account it and God's proving grace :"By this grandeur how long will he stretch his neck out?After pleasure, the torture of pain comes, no doubt!"And should a distressed one, without stock in hand,Be raised up by Fortune to wealth and command,Their poisonous teeth they snap at him from rage,Saying, " Cherish but wretches does this sordid age!"When they see that affairs in your hands are all right,You are greedy and worship the world, in their sight.If from active employment your hand you withhold,They call you a beggar and parasite bold.If you talk, you're a drum, full of whimsical din ;And if mute, you're to portraits on bath walls akin.They don't call him a man who some patience displays ;Saying, "Wretched! from terror his head he can't raise !"If manliness' awe in his head should appear,They fly from him, saying, "What madness is here?"If he sparingly eats, they malign him, and say:"His income, perhaps, is another man's pay."And if he has good and luxurious fare,They say he's a glutton, whose body's his care!If a man who is rich does not cultivate style—Self-adornment in men of discretion is vile—With their tongues, like a sword, to his damage, they whack,Saying, "Luckless ! his gold from himself he keeps back."And should he adorn his apartments and halls,And wrap himself up in magnificent shawls,He is worried to death, on account of their taunts,Saying, " Decked in the raiment of women he flaunts!"If a pious man has not a journey essayed,Those say, "He's no man !" who have pilgrimage made."He has never," they say, "left his sweetheart's embrace;Where for merit and wisdom and skill has he place?"They tear the man's skin who has many climes seen,Saying, "Wretched and luckless this person has been !Had his lines in prosperity's shadow been cast,Him, from city to city, the Fates had not passed!"The caviller slanders the bachelor swain,Saying, " Earth at his sleeping and waking's in pain."If he marry, he says, " From the heart's strong desire,He headlong falls down, like an ass, in the mire."The ugly from tyrannous man cannot go,Nor the fair from the cowardly, filthy-tongued foe.