Search Poetry

(Masnavi Book 4: 24) Pharaoh and Haman





The resemblance of the bad judgement of this base vizier in corrupting the king's generosity to (that of) the vizier of Pharaoh, namely, Hámán, in corrupting the readiness of Pharaoh to receive (the true Faith).

1240. How many a time did Pharaoh soften and become submissive when he was hearing that Word from Moses!—

That Word (which was such) that from the sweetness of that incomparable Word the rock would have yielded milk.
Whenever he took counsel with Hámán, who was his vizier and whose nature it was to hate, Then he (Hámán) would say,Until now you have been the Khedive: wilt you become, through deception, the slave to a wearer of rags?”
Those words would come like a stone shot by a mangonel (ballista) and strike upon his glass
house.

1245. All that the Kam of sweet address built up in a hundred days he (Hámán) would destroy in one moment.
Thy intellect is the vizier and is overcome by sensuality: in (the realm of) your being it is a brigand
(that attacks thee) on the Way to God.
(If) a godly monitor give you good advice, it will artfully put those words (of his) aside,
Saying, “These (words) are not well-founded: take heed, don't be carried away (by them); they are not (worth) so much: come to yourself (be sensible), don't be crazed.
Alas for the king whose vizier is this (carnal intellect): the place (abode) of them both is vengeful
Hell.

1250. Happy is the king whose helper in affairs is a vizier like Ásaf.
When the just king is associated with him, his (the king's) name is light upon light.
A king like Solomon and a vizier like Ásaf are light upon light and ambergris upon abír. (When) the king (is like) Pharaoh and his vizier like Hámán, ill-fortune is inevitable for both. Then it is (a case of) darkness, one part over another: neither intellect nor fortune shall be their
friend on the Day of Judgement.

1255. I have not seen aught but misery in the vile: if you have seen (aught else), convey (to them) the salaam (of felicitation) from me.
The king is as the spirit, and the vizier as the intellect: the corrupt intellect brings the spirit into movement (towards corruption).
When the angelical intellect became a Hárút, it became the teacher in magic to two hundred
devils.
Do not take the particular (individual) intellect as your vizier: make the Universal Intellect your vizier, O king.
Do not make sensuality your vizier, else your pure spirit will cease from prayer,

1260. For this sensuality is full of greed and sees (only) the immediate present, (whereas) the
Intellect takes thought for the Day of Judgement.
The two eyes of the Intellect are (fixed) on the end of things: it endures the pain of the thorn for the sake of that Rose
Which does not fade and drop in autumn—far from it be the wind (breath) of every nose that
cannot smell!

No comments:

Post a Comment