CHANT OF THE STARS
| Your reason is the fruit of life, your love is creation’s mystery; | |
| O form of dust, welcome to this side of the world of dimensions! | |
| Venus and Moon and Jupiter are rivals on your account, | |
| for one glance from you there’s a great jostle of manifestations. | |
| On the road to the Beloved there are revelations ever fresh and new; | |
| the man of true yearning and desire yields not his heart to the All. | |
| Life is truth and purity, life is quickening and surging; | |
| gallop from eternity to eternity; life is the Kingdom of God. | |
| Unto the passion of minstrelsy give leave to clamour and riot, | |
| give wine again to profligate and censor, wine pitcher on pitcher. | |
| Syria and Iraq, India and Persia are accustomed to the sugarcane; | |
| give to the sugar-cane’s habituate the bitterness of desire! | |
| That it may enter upon battle with the high-billowed ocean | |
| give to the heart of the rivulet the joy of the swift torrent. | |
| The poor man is a fire, rulership and power imperial are straw; | |
| a naked sword is ample enough for the august pomp of kings. | |
| The drumming of the dervish, Alexander’s clamorous vanity— | |
| the one is the rapture of Moses, the other the Samiri’s conjuring. | |
| The one slays with a glance, the other slays with an army; | |
| the one is all peace and amity, the other is all war and wrangling. | |
| Both were conquerors of the world, both sought immortality, | |
| the one by the guidance of violence, the other guided by love. | |
| Bring the hammer-blow of the dervish, break the rampart of Alexander; | 465 |
| renew the ancient wont of Moses, break the glamour of wizardry! |
0 comments:
Post a Comment