1916.] Quatrains of Abu Sa'id bin AbVl Khair. 201 



19. 



s Whom thou fanci 

 thou what He did ? 



Dids't thou plumb His depths and see that which He did ? 



Said He : " All that thy heart desires will I do." 



Sawest thou what He did ? Didst thou hear what He said ? 



20. 



Thou art too good for any man to think of Thee, 

 Or for such as I to ponder on thy state. 

 But God, thy Creator, glories in His work perchance, 

 And delights in gazing upon thy beauty. 



21. 



What can the lover do who humbleth not himself ? 



How shall he spend the nights, when he goes not to thy street ? 



If he kiss thy locks, be not angry ; 



What can the madman do but search for a chain ? 



To compare curled locks to a chain which 

 binds the lover to his beloved is a common simile 

 in Oriental poetry. Compare < Iraqi :— 



The Friend is drawing me by the chain of His 



loo 1\S 



And I follow Him whithersoever He draws me. 



22. 



The men of His path have no thought of existence. 



Self-regard they practise not, nor self-worship. 



There where the men of God drink the Wine of Detachment 



They drain the tavern ; yet fall not into excess. 



The Gulshan-i-Rdz of Mahmud-i-Shabistari (1250 



1320) one of the great mystical treatises of all 



time, speaks of " the haunters of the tavern who 

 are drunk with the wine of illumination from self." 

 By the words " commit no drunken excess" 

 (in line 4) he means that they are not blinded to 

 the Truth by loss of self-control. The composure 

 of "sobriety" is, as a mental state, contrasted 

 by the Sufis with the rapture of "intoxication." 



