1207-1273 · the Persian world and Konya. Jalálu'd-dín Rúmí was a scholar of law who met a wandering dervish named Shams and became the best known mystic poet on earth. His Masnavi runs to six books of rhymed couplets and was left unfinished at his death. Here is a small selection from it, in an early public domain translation, each passage with a line of introduction.
About this translation
The passages below are E. H. Whinfield's rendering of the Masnavi, in the selection printed in F. Hadland Davis, The Persian Mystics: Jalálu'd-dín Rúmí (Wisdom of the East series, first published 1907), whose preface credits its Masnavi quotations to Whinfield. The titles are that volume's, the texts are reproduced verbatim, and the capitalized BELOVED is the Sufi name for God.
Fair warning: this is Victorian English, thee and thou included. It is also honest, public domain, and checkable line by line, which much modern Rumi on the internet is not. We kept the selection small on purpose. Every passage here can be traced to the named edition, and a shorter true page beats a longer doubtful one.
Eight passages from the Masnavi
Sorrow Quenched in the Beloved
Four lines of grief with one request inside them: the days can burn away, if what they burned toward remains.
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, O Incomparable Pure One.
The Music of Love
Love greeted as a sweet madness and a physician. Rumi names Plato and Galen, the two great healers of Greek learning, and says love outdoes them both.
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,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.
The Silence of Love
The astrolabe line is the most quoted in the book: an instrument for reading heavens you cannot touch. Then the admission every honest writer on love arrives at.
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.Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear,But Love unexplained is better.
When the Rose Has Faded
The lover matters here only as a veil over what he loves. Without the quickening of love, a bird that has lost its wings.
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,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?
Pain Is a Treasure
The hard center of Rumi's teaching on suffering: the cold, dark places are where the fountain starts, and autumns come charged with springs.
Pain is a treasure, for it contains mercies;The kernel is soft when the rind is scraped off.O brother, the place of darkness and coldIs the fountain of Life and the cup of ecstasy.So also is endurance of pain and sickness and disease.For from abasement proceeds exaltation.The spring seasons are hidden in the autumns,And the autumns are charged with springs.
Behold the Water of Waters
Sea and foam: the visible world as spray thrown up by something vaster. Asleep in the boat of the body is the image to keep.
The sea itself is one thing, the foam another;Neglect the foam, and regard the sea with your eyes.Waves of foam rise from the sea night and day.You look at the foam ripples and not at the mighty sea.We, like boats, are tossed hither and thither,We are blind though we are on the bright ocean.Ah! you who are asleep in the boat of the body,You see the water; behold the Water of waters!Under the water you see there is another Water moving it.Within the spirit is a Spirit that calls it.
When you have accepted the Light, O beloved,When you behold what is veiled without a veil,Like a star you will walk upon the heavens.
Where Love Is
A traveler is asked which city is the most delightful. The answer makes geography beside the point.
A damsel said to her lover, "O fond youth,You have visited many cities in your travels;Which of those cities seems most delightful to you?"He made answer, "The city wherein my love dwells,In whatever nook my queen alights;Though it be as the eye of a needle, 'tis a wide plain;Wherever her Yusuf-like face shines as a moon,Though it be the bottom of a well, 'tis Paradise.With thee, my love, hell itself were heaven.With thee a prison would be a rose-garden.With thee hell would be a mansion of delight,Without thee lilies and roses would be as flames of fire!"
Resignation the Way to Perfection
Four lines on why admitting a fault is movement and feeling finished is the dead end.
Whoso recognises and confesses his own defectsIs hastening in the way that leads to Perfection!But he advances not towards the AlmightyWho fancies himself to be perfect.