Do You Love Me?

A lover asked his beloved,

Do you love yourself more
than you love me?

The beloved replied,

I have died to myself
and I live for you.

I’ve disappeared from myself

and my attributes.
I am present only for you.

I have forgotten all my learning,

but from knowing you
I have become a scholar.

I have lost all my strength,

but from your power
I am able.

If I love myself
I love you.
If I love you
I love myself.

Defeated by Love
The sky was lit
by the splendor of the moon

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 So powerful
I fell to the ground

Your love
has made me sure

I am ready to forsake
this worldly life
and surrender
to the magnificence
of your Being

O Love
O Love, O pure deep Love, be here, be now,
Be all – worlds dissolve into your
stainless endless radiance,
Frail living leaves burn with your brighter
than cold stares –
Make me your servant, your breath, your core.

Draw it now from Eternity's Jar

Come, come, awaken all true drunkards!
Pour the wine that is Life itself!
O cupbearer of the Eternal Wine,
Draw it now from Eternity’s Jar!
This wine doesn’t run down the throat
But it looses torrents of words!
Cupbearer, make my soul fragrant as musk,
This noble soul of mine that knows the Invisible!
Pour out the wine for the morning drinkers!
Pour them this subtle and priceless musk!
Pass it around to everyone in the assembly
In the cups of your blazing drunken eyes!
Pass a philter from your eyes to everyone else’s
In a way the mouth knows nothing of,
For this is the way cupbearers always offer
The holy and mysterious wine to lovers.
Hurry, the eyes of every atom in Creation
Are famished for this flaming-out of splendour!
Procure for yourself this fragrance of musk
And with it split open the breast of heaven!
The waves of the fragrance of this musk
Drive all Josephs out of their minds forever!

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Love
Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?
Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain,
and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.
Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal:
it has no interest in a disloyal companion.
The human being resembles a tree; its root is a covenant with God:
that root must be cherished with all one's might.
A weak covenant is a rotten root, without grace or fruit.
Though the boughs and leaves of the date palm are green,
greenness brings no benefit if the root is corrupt.
If a branch is without green leaves, yet has a good root,
a hundred leaves will put forth their hands in the end.

Let Me be Mad
O incomparable Giver of life, cut reason loose at last!
Let it wander grey-eyed from vanity to vanity.
Shatter open my skull, pour in it the wine of madness!
Let me be mad, as You; mad with You, with us.
Beyond the sanity of fools is a burning desert
Where Your sun is whirling in every atom:
Beloved, drag me there, let me roast in Perfection!

- Rumi

With Passion
WITH PASSION

With
passion pray. With
passion work. With passion make love.
With passion eat and drink and dance and play.
Why look like a dead fish
in this ocean
of
God?

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When the Rose is gone
When the rose is gone and the garden faded
you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.
The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil.
The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.
If love withholds its strengthening care,
the lover is left like a bird without care,
the lover is left like a bird without wings.
How will I be awake and aware
if the light of the Beloved is absent?
Love wills that this Word be brought forth

The Agony and Ecstasy

The Agony and Ecstasy of Divine Discontent:
The Moods of Rumi

In the orchard and rose garden

I long to see your face.
In the taste of Sweetness
I long to kiss your lips.
In the shadows of passion
I long for your love.

Oh! Supreme Lover!

Let me leave aside my worries.
The flowers are blooming
with the exultation of your Spirit.

By Allah!
I long to escape the prison of my ego
and lose myself
in the mountains and the desert.

These sad and lonely people tire me.

I long to revel in the drunken frenzy of your love
and feel the strength of Rustam in my hands.

I’m sick of mortal kings.

I long to see your light.
With lamps in hand
the sheiks and mullahs roam
the dark alleys of these towns
not finding what they seek.

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 You are the Essence of the Essence,
The intoxication of Love.
I long to sing your praises
but stand mute
with the agony of wishing in my heart.

The Temple of Love

The temple of love is not love itself;

True love is the treasure,
Not the walls about it.
Do not admire the decoration,
But involve yourself in the essence,
The perfume that invades and touches you-
The beginning and the end.
Discovered, this replace all else,
The apparent and the unknowable.
Time and space are slaves to this presence.

Light up the Fire

I gaze into the heart, lowly it may be,

Thought the words be higher still.
For the heart is all the substance,
The speech an accident.
How many phrases will you speak,
Too many for me.
How much burning, burning will you feel,
Be friendly with the fire, enough for me.
Light up the fire of love inside,
And blaze the thoughts away.

The Privileged Lovers

The moon has become a dancer
at this festival of love.
This dance of light,

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 This sacred blessing,
This divine love,
beckons us
to a world beyond
only lovers can see
with their eyes of fiery passion.

They are the chosen ones

who have surrendered.
Once they were particles of light
now they are the radiant sun.

They have left behind

the world of deceitful games.
They are the privileged lovers
who create a new world
with their eyes of fiery passion.

Behind the Scenes

Is it your face
that adorns the garden?
Is it your fragrance
that intoxicates this garden?
Is it your spirit
that has made this brook
a river of wine?

Hundreds have looked for you

and died searching
in this garden
where you hide behind the scenes.

But this pain is not for those

who come as lovers.
You are easy to find here.
You are in the breeze
and in this river of wine

The Meaning of Love

Both light and shadow
are the dance of Love.
Love has no cause;
it is the astrolabe of God’s secrets.
Lover and Loving are inseparable
and timeless.

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 Although I may try to describe Love
when I experience it I am speechless.
Although I may try to write about Love
I am rendered helpless;
my pen breaks and the paper slips away
at the ineffable place
where Lover, Loving and Loved are one.

Every moment is made glorious

by the light of Love.

Confused and Distraught

Again I am raging, I am in such a state by your soul that every
bond you bind, I break, by your soul.
I am like heaven, like the moon, like a candle by your glow; I am all
reason, all love, all soul, by your soul.
My joy is of your doing, my hangover of your thorn; whatever
side you turn your face, I turn mine, by your soul.
I spoke in error; it is not surprising to speak in error in this
state, for this moment I cannot tell cup from wine, by your soul.
I am that madman in bonds who binds the "divs"; I, the madman,
am a Solomon with the "divs", by your soul.
Whatever form other than love raises up its head from my
heart, forthwith I drive it out of the court of my heart, by your soul.
Come, you who have departed, for the thing that departs
comes back; neither you are that, by my soul, nor I am that, by your soul.
Disbeliever, do not conceal disbelief in your soul, for I will recite
the secret of your destiny, by your soul.
Out of love of Sham-e Tabrizi, through wakefulness or
nightrising, like a spinning mote I am distraught, by your soul.

Reason says love says

Reason says, "I will beguile him with the tongue;"
Love says, "Be silent. I will beguile him with the soul."
The soul says to the heart, "Go, do not laugh at me and yourself.
What is there that is not his, that I may beguile him thereby?"

He is not sorrowful and anxious and seeking oblivion

that I may beguile him with wine and a heavy measure.
The arrow of his glance needs not a bow that I should
beguile the shaft of his gaze with a bow.

He is not prisoner of the world, fettered to this world

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of earth, that I should beguile him with gold of the kingdom of the world.
He is an angel, though in form he is a man; he is not
lustful that I should beguile him with women.

Angels start away from the house wherein this form

is, so how should I beguile him with such a form and likeness?
He does not take a flock of horses, since he flies on wings;
his food is light, so how should I beguile him with bread?

He is not a merchant and trafficker in the market of the

world that I should beguile him with enchantment of gain and loss.
He is not veiled that I should make myself out sick and
utter sighs, to beguile him with lamentation.

I will bind my head and bow my head, for I have got out
of hand; I will not beguile his compassion with sickness or fluttering.
Hair by hair he sees my crookedness and feigning; what's
hidden from him that I should beguile him with anything hidden.

He is not a seeker of fame, a prince addicted to poets,

that I should beguile him with verses and lyrics and flowing poetry.
The glory of the unseen form is too great for me to
beguile it with blessing or Paradise.

This is to Love
This is love: to fly to heaven, every moment to rend a hundred veils;
At first instance, to break away from breath --
first step, to renounce feet;
To disregard this world, to see only that which you yourself have seen I said, "Heart,
congratulations on entering the circle of lovers,
"On gazing beyond the range of the eye,
on running into the alley of the breasts."
Whence came this breath, O heart?
Whence came this throbbing, O heart?
Bird, speak the tongue of birds: I can heed your cipher!
The heart said, "I was in the factory whilst the home of water and clay was abaking.
"I was flying from the workshop whilst the workshop was being created.
"When I could no more resist, they dragged me; how shall I
tell the manner of that dragging?"

Ode 2180
From these depths depart towards heaven;
may your soul be happy, journey joyfully.

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You have escaped from the city full of fear and trembling;
happily become a resident of the Abode of Security
If the body’s image has gone, await the image-maker; if the
body is utterly ruined, become all soul.
If your face has become saffron pale through death, become a
dweller among tulip beds and Judas trees.
If the doors of repose have been barred to you, come, depart
by way of the roof and the ladder.
If you are alone from Friends and companions, by the help of
God become a saheb-qeran. [lord of happy circumstance].
If you have been secluded from water and bread, like bread
become the food of the souls, and so become!

It is the Rule with drunkards

What may that gold be? The lover is the king of kings; it
means becoming secure from death and not caring for the golden crown.
The darvish in his cloak, and in his pocket the pearl - why
should he be ashamed of begging from door to door?
Last night that moon came along, having flung his girdle on the road, so
drunken that he was not aware that his girdle had fallen.
I said, "Leap up, my heart, place wine in the hand of the soul;
for such a time has befallen, it is time to be roistering.
"To become hand in hand with the garden nightingale, to fall
into sugar with the spiritual parrot."
I, heart-forlorn and heart-yielded, fallen upon your way - by
Allah, I know of no other place to fall.
If I broke your bowl, I am drunk, my idol. I am drunk - leave
me not from you hand to fall into danger.
This is a newborn rule, a newly enacted decree - to shatter
glasses, and to fall upon the glassmaker!

All is Vanity
~

Fame, wisdom, love, and power were mine,

And health and youth possessed me;
My goblets blushed from every vine,
And lovely forms caressed me;
I sunned my heart in beauty’ eyes,
And felt my soul grow tender;
All earth can give, or mortal prize,
Was mine of regal splendour.

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 I strive to number o’er what days
Remembrance can discover,
Which all that life or earth displays
Would lure me to live over.
There rose no day, there rolled no hour
Of pleasure unembittered;
And not a trapping decked my power
That galled not while it glittered.

The serpent of the field, by art

And spells, is won from harming;
But that which soils around the heart,
Oh! who hath power of charming?
It will not list to wisdom’s lore,
Nor music’s voice can lure it;
But there it stings for evermore
The soul that must endure it.

- Lord Byron

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

- Lord Byron

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