ON POVERTY AND PERPLEXITY
He hears the heart's low voice of supplication. He knows when the heart's secret rises up to Him; when supplication opens the door of the heart, its desire comes forward to meet it; the 'Here am I ' of the Friend goes out to welcome the heart's cry of 'O Lord ' as it ascends from the high road of acquiescence. One cry of 'O Lord ' from thee,--from Him two hundred times comes 'Here am I ' one 'Peace ' from thee,--a thousand times He answers 'And on thee '; let men do good or ill, His mercy and His bounty still proceed.
Poverty is an ornament in His court,--thou bringest thy worldly stock-in-trade and its profits as a present; but thy long grief is what He will accept, His abundance will receive thy neediness. Bilâl whose body's skin was black as a sweetheart's locks, was a friend in His court; his outward garment became as a black mole of amorous allurement upon the face of the maidens of Paradise.
O Thou who marshallest the company of darwîshes, O Thou who watchest the sorrow of the sore at heart, heal him who is now like unto a quince, I make him like the bowstring who is now bent as the bow. I am utterly helpless in the grasp of poverty; O Thou, who rulest the affairs of men, rule mine. I am solitary in the land of the angels, lonely in the glory of the world of might; the verse of my knowledge I has not even a beginning, but the excess of in yearning has no end.