Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273 C.E.)

The Divani Shamsi Tabriz

Overview: Although Rumi was born in Afghanistan and lived in Turkey, his poetry was written mostly in Persian, and his Sufi religious beliefs transcended national boundaries. Afghanistan was on the edge of the Persian Empire, and Rumi’s father was a traditional Islamic religious teacher who trained his son to follow in his footsteps. When he was forty, Rumi had a religious epiphany when he met Shams, a wandering Sufi, who was about sixty. Rumi became a Sufi, and the outpouring of poetry that followed was staggering. Sufism combines ideas from Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism, and it attempts to achieve union with God: not by logical means (which is beyond the ability of the human mind), but by emotional means. Rumi founded the Mevlevi order of dervishes, sometimes called whirling dervishes because of the spinning dance that they do to achieve a trance-like state. Despite the loss of Shams, who may have been murdered by Rumi’s jealous disciples, Rumi continued to write, amassing over forty thousand couplets of poetry over his lifetime. The Divani Shamsi Tabriz is a collection of individual poems, including poems in the ghazal form and the rubaiyat form (which are different ways to group couplets). Today Rumi is the most important medieval Persian poet and one of the most widely-read mystical poets. Perhaps in part because of his emphasis on the positive, and his embrace of all religions, Rumi is now the best-selling poet in the United States (Ciabattari). Written by Laura J. Getty

Jalálu’d-Dín Rúmí, Edited by F. Hadland Davis, L. Cranmer-Byng, and S. A. Kapadia Sorrow

Quenched In The Beloved

Through grief my days are as labour and sorrow.

My days move on, hand in hand with anguish.

Yet, though my days vanish thus, ‘tis no matter.

Do Thou abide, Incomparable Pure One.

The Music Of Love

 Hail to thee, then, O love, sweet madness!

Thou who healest all our infirmities!

Who art the Physician of our pride and self-conceit!

Who art our Plato and our Galen!

 Love exalts our earthly bodies to heaven,                         5

And makes the very hills to dance with joy!

O lover, ‘twas Love that gave life to Mount Sinai,

When “it quaked, and Moses fell down in a swoon.”

Did my Beloved only touch me with

His lips, I too, like a flute, would burst out into melody.          10

When The Rose Has Faded

 When the rose has faded and the garden is withered,

The song of the nightingale is no longer to be heard.

The BELOVED is all in all, the lover only veils Him;

The BELOVED is all that lives, the lover a dead thing.

When the lover feels no longer love’s quickening,                5

He becomes like a bird who has lost its wings.

Alas! How can I retain my senses about me,

When the beloved shows not the Light of His countenance?

The Silence Of Love

Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries.

A lover may hanker after this love or that love,

But at the last he is drawn to the king of Love.

However much we describe and explain Love,

When we fall in love we are ashamed of our words.                5

Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear,

But Love unexplained is better.

Earthly Love Essential To The Love Divine

In one ‘twas said, “Leave power and weakness alone;

Whatever withdraws thine eyes from God is an idol.”

In one ‘twas said, “Quench not thy earthy torch,

That it may be a light to lighten mankind.

If thou neglectest regard and care for it,                        5

Thou wilt quench at midnight the lamp of Union.”

The Eternal Splendour Of The Beloved

Why dost Thou flee from the cries of us on earth?

Why pourest Thou sorrow on the heart of the sorrowful?

O Thou who, as each new morn dawns from the east,

Art seen uprising anew, like a bright fountain!

What excuse makest Thou for Thy witcheries?                5

O Thou whose lips are sweeter than sugar.

Thou that ever renewest the life of this old world.

Hear the cry of this lifeless body and heart!

Woman

Woman is a ray of God, not a mere mistress,

The Creator’s Self, as it were, not a mere creature!

The Divine Union

Mustafa became beside himself at that sweet call,

His prayer failed on “the night of the early morning halt.”

He lifted not head from that blissful sleep,

So that his morning prayer was put off till noon.

On that, his wedding night, in the presence of his bride.                5

His pure soul attained to kiss her hands.

Love and mistress are both veiled and hidden.

Impute it not a fault if I call Him “Bride.”

“He Knows About It All”

He who is from head to foot a perfect rose or lily.

To him spring brings rejoicing.

The useless thorn desires the autumn,

That autumn may associate itself with the garden;

And hide the rose’s beauty and the thorn’s shame,                        5

That men may not see the bloom of the one and the other’s shame;

That common stone and pure ruby may appear all as one.

Resignation

True, the Gardener knows the difference in the autumn,

But the sight of One is better than the world’s sight.

Resignation The Way To Perfection

Whoso recognises and confesses his own defects

Is hastening in the way that leads to Perfection!

But he advances not towards the Almighty

Who fancies himself to be perfect.

Love The Source Of Light Rather Than Vanishing Form

Whatsoever is perceived by sense He annuls,

But He establishes that which is hidden from the senses.

The lover’s love is visible, his Beloved hidden.

The Friend is absent, the distraction He causes present.

Renounce these affections for outward forms,                         5

Love depends not on outward form or face.

Whatever is beloved is not a mere empty form,

Whether your beloved be of the earth or heaven.

Whatever is the form you have fallen in love with—

Why do you forsake it the moment life leaves it?                         10

Source: Getty, Laura and Kwon, Kyounghye, "Compact Anthology of World Literature" (2015). English Open Textbooks. 2.

https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/2

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