Muntakhab al-tawarikh 366.7

366.7

My disquiet has drawn me from love to madness, If thy auspicious glance should fall by chance on an onion, The world beside it appears less than an onion. In this thy age thy Zu-l-faqar explains to thy enemy and thy ‘Yea, verily’ to thy petitioner the meaning of ‘Nay’ and ‘Yea.’ If through thy mind there pass but the semblance of wrath, Death trembles like a willow from fear. The sky of thy might has such width that the sun Would not wonder could he find shelter behind it as behind a lofty mountain. If thy dagger lend its tongue to the sword of discipline Woe be to the sky with its crooked dealings, its fraud and its many deceits. Since eloquence is decked as a bride for thy praise, I have decked her with striped garments of flowery speech. Woe to thee Nami, and woe to those who shall arise with thee, When the black book of your acts is opened before you at the resurrection! I am hopeful of obtaining a mediator like the sun On that day on which there shall no longer remain any shadow of hope, Him who is the rain from the cloud of God’s mercy, the cup-bearer of the Day of Resurrection, The greatest protection of the faith, and the lord even of death.” Quatrains. “One should sit alone with one’s self in the assembly, One should commune ever with one’s self, One should be both the nightingale and the rose of the meadow, One should be distraught with one’s own affairs The king of Najaf, ‘Ali, the saint, the king who passes not away