{"collection":"Islam","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/srg/srg18.htm","path":"isl/srg/srg18.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/isl/srg/srg18.htm","text":"The Secret Rose Garden, by Florence Lederer, [1920]\nTHE Light which is manifest\n Leads all hearts captive,\n Now as the minstrel, now as the cupbearer.\nWhat a singer is He who, by one strain of sweet melody,\n Burns the harvests of a hundred devotees!\n What a cupbearer is He who, by a single goblet,\n Inebriates two hundred threescore and ten!\nEntering the Mosque at dawn,\n He leaves there no wakeful man;\n Entering the cloister at night,\n He makes a fable of S\u016bf\u012bs' tales;\n Entering the college veiled as a drunkard,\n The professor becomes hopelessly drunken.\nDevotees go mad for love of Him\n And become outcasts from house and home,\n He makes one faithful, another an infidel,\n Disturbing the world.\n Taverns have been glorified by His lips,\n Mosques have become shining by His cheek.\nAll I desire I have found in Him,\n Gaining deliverance from self,\n My heart was ignorant of itself,\n Veiled from Him by a hundred veils\n Of vanity, conceit, and illusion.\nONE day at the dawn\n The fair idol entered my door\n And woke me from my sleep\n Of slothful ignorance.\n The secret chamber of my soul\n Was illumined by His face,\n And my being was revealed to me\n In its true light.\n I heaved a sigh of wonder\n When I saw that fair face.\n He spoke to me, saying,\n\"All thy life thou has sought\n Name and fame;\n This self-seeking of thine\n Is an illusion, keeping thee back from Me.\n To glance at My face for an instant\n Is worth a thousand years of devotion.\"\nYes, the face of that world-adorner\n Was shown unveiled before mine eyes;\n My soul was darkened with shame\n To remember my lost life,\n My wasted days.\nTHEN that moon\n Whose face shone like the sun,\n Seeing I had cast hope away,\n Filled a goblet of Divine Knowledge\n And, passing to me, bade me drink,\n Saying, \"With this wine,\n Tasteless and odourless,\n Wash away the writing\n On thy being's tablet.\"\nINTOXICATED from the pure draught\n Which I had drained to the dregs,\n In the bare dust I fell.\n Since then I know not if I exist or not,\n But I am not sober, neither am I ill or drunken.\n Sometimes, like His eye, I am full of joy,\n Or, like His curl, I am waving;\n Sometimes, alas! from habit or nature,\n I am lying on a dust heap.\n Sometimes, at a glance from Him,\n I am back in the Rose Garden.","title":"The Secret Rose Garden: Part XIV. The Light Manifest","type":"page"}