Low in the earth

I lived in realms of ore and stone;

And then I smiled in many-tinted flowers;

Then roving with the wild and wandering hours,

O’er earth and air and ocean’s zone,

In a new birth,

I dived and flew,

And crept and ran,

And all the secret of my essence drew

Within a form that brought them all to view—

And lo, a Man!

And then my goal,

Beyond the clouds, beyond the sky,

In realms where none may change or die—

In angel form; and then away

Beyond the bounds of night and day,

And Life and Death, unseen or seen,

Where all that is hath ever been,

As One and Whole.

Rumi, as translated by Thadani, quoted in Sir Mohammad Iqbal’s “The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam”

Contributed to this blog by Navid Zaidi