ON POVERTY AND PERPLEXITY.

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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.

p. 123

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.