A beauty that all night long teaches love-tricks to Venus and the moon, Whose two eyes by their witchery seal up the two eyes of heaven. Look to your hearts! I, whate'er betide, O Moslems, Am so mingled with him that no heart is mingled with me. I was born of his love at the first, I gave him my heart at the last; When the fruit springs from the bough, on that bough it hangs. The tip of his curl is saying, "Ho! betake you to rope-dancing." The cheek of his candle is saying, "Where is a moth that it may burn?" For the sake of dancing on that rope, O heart, make haste, become a hoop; Cast yourself on the flame, when his candle is lit. You will never more endure without the flame, when you have known the rapture of burning; If the water of life should come to you, it would not stir you from the flame.
The end and object of all negation is to attain to subsequent affirmation, as the negation in the creed, "There is no God," finds its complement and purpose in the affirmation "but God." Just so the purpose of negation of self is to clear the way for the apprehension of the fact that there is no existence but the One. The intoxication of Life and its pleasures and occupations veils the Truth from men's eyes, and they ought to pass on to the spiritual intoxication which makes men beside themselves and lifts them to the beatific vision of eternal Truth.
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