Noon Meem Rashid

William Butler Yeats

All things uncomely and broken,

all things worn-out and old,

The cry of a child by the roadway,

the creak of a lumbering cart,

The heavy steps of the ploughman,

splashing the wintry mould,

Are wronging your image that blossoms

a rose in the deeps of my heart.
The wrong of unshapely things

is a wrong too great to be told,

I hunger to build them anew

and sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water,

remade, like a casket of gold

For my dreams of your image that blossoms

a rose in the deeps of my heart.

Excerpt From The Beloved-Khalil Gibran

At The Gate Of The Temple
I purified my lips with sacred fire that I might speak of love, but when I opened my mouth to speak, I found myself mute.I sang the melodies of a love I did not yet know, but when I came to know it, the words became a muffled whisper in my mouth, the songs in my breast a profound silence.In the past, O people, you asked me about the wonders and delights of love, and you found satisfaction in what I told you. But now, when love has draped me with its robes, I in my turn come to ask you about its ways and virtues. Is there one among you who can answer me? I come to ask you about what is in me and wish you to tell me of my own soul. Is there one among you who can explain my heart to my own heart, who can explain my essence to my essence itself?Will you not tell me what is this fire kindled in my breast?It consumes my faculties and melts my emotions and desires.What are these invisible hands, soft yet coarse, that grip my spirit in my hours of solitude and loneliness? Into my heart they pour wine mixed with the bitterness of pleasure and the sweetness of pain.What are these things rustling about my couch in the silence of the night as I watch makeful for what I know not, listening to what I do not hear, starting at what I do not see, pondering what I do not comprehend, aware of what I do not apprehend, sighing because in sighs are the groanings more beloved to me than the echoes of laughter and joy, submitting to an unseen power that slays me, then gives me life, then slays me again and again until dawn breaks and light fills the corners of my room. Then I sleep. Yet behind my spent eyelids forms of wakefulness dance and on my stony blanket sway the phantoms of dreams.What is this which we call 'love'?Tell me what is this hidden mystery concealed beyond the ages, lurking behind appearances, yet making its home in the heart of being?What is this unconditioned thought that comes as the cause of all effects, as the effect of all causes?What is this wakefulness that encompasses both death and life and molds them into a dream stranger than life and deeper than death?Tell me, O people, tell me! Who among you would not wake from the sleep of life if love were to brush your spirit with its fingertips?Who among you would not forsake your father and your mother and your home if the girl whom your heart loved were to call to him?Who among you would not cross the seas, traverse deserts, go over mountains and valleys to reach the woman whom his spirit has chosen?What youth would not follow his heart to the ends of the earth to breathe the sweetness of his lover's breath, feel the soft touch of her hands, delight in the melody of her voice?What man would not immolate his soul that its smoke might rise to a god who would bear his plea and answer his prayer?

Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir

Drink from this heart now,

for all this loving it contains.

When you look for it again,

it will be dancing in the wind.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

WHAT'S the best thing in the world?
June-rose, by May-dew impearled;
Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;
Truth, not cruel to a friend;
Pleasure, not in haste to end;
Beauty, not self-decked and curled
Till its pride is over-plain;
Love, when, so, you're loved again.
What's the best thing in the world?
--Something out of it, I think.

Four talked about the pine tree. One defined it by genus, species, and variety. One assessed its disadvantages for the lumber industry. One quoted poems about pine trees in many languages. One took root, stretched out branches, and rustled.
–Dan Pagis

Goethe

And joy like a star sound
Floats only in a dream before us.
In golden moments of the springtime sun
This vision held me
Spellbound; sweet
That darkness of the senses,
This dream I could begin
But not complete.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

William Wordsworth

But for those obstinate questionings

Of sense and outward things,

Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature

Moving about in worlds not realised,

High instincts before which our mortal Nature

Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
But for those first affections,

Those shadowy recollections,

Which, be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day,

Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence:

truths that wake,To perish never;

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,

Nor Man nor Boy,

Nor all that is at enmity with joy,

Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

Ibn ' Arabi

Charles Baudelaire

One should always be drunk. That's all that matters;

that's our one imperative need.

So as not to feel Time's horrible burden

one which breaks your shoulders and bows you down,

you must get drunk without cease.
But with what? With wine, poetry, or virtue?

as you choose.

But get drunk.
And if, at some time, on steps of a palace,

in the green grass of a ditch,

in the bleak solitude of your room,

you are waking and the drunkenness has already abated,

ask the wind, the wave, the stars,

the clock, all that which flees,

all that which groans,

all that which rolls,

all that which sings,

all that which speaks,

ask them, what time it is;

and the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock,

they will all reply:
"It is time to get drunk!
So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,

get drunk, get drunk, and never pause for rest!

With wine, poetry, or virtue,

as you choose!"

St. Augustine of Hippo

"pretium caritatis tu"

(the price of love is thyself)

Khalil Gibran

"But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully."

Qushayri

My ordeal in you is that

I take no heed of my ordeal.

Your nearness is like your farness.

When is the moment of my rest?

Rumi!

Khalil Gibran-Love!