Page:The Mesnevī (Volume 2).pdf/78

 THE LION AND THE BEASTS 53

(aloft). Do you receive (His commands)? He will cause you to be received (into His favour).

If you accept His command, you will become the spokesman (thereof); if you seek union (with Him), thereafter you will become united.

Freewill is the endeavour to thank (God) for His beneficence: your necessitarianism is the denial of that beneficence.

Thanksgiving for the power (of acting freely) increases your power; necessitarianism takes the (Divine) gift (of freewill) out of your hand.

940

Your necessitarianism is (like) sleeping on the road: do not sleep! Sleep not, until you see the gate and the threshold!

Beware! do not sleep, O inconsiderate necessitarian, save underneath that fruit-laden tree,

So that every moment the wind may shake the boughs and shower upon the sleeper (spiritual) dessert and provision for the journey.

Necessitarianism is to sleep amidst highwaymen: how should the untimely bird receive quarter?

And if you turn up your nose at His signs, you deem (yourself) a man, but when you consider (more deeply), you are (only) a woman.

945

This measure of understanding which you possess is lost: a head from which the understanding is severed becomes a tail,

Because ingratitude is wickedness and disgrace and brings the ingrate to the bottom of Hell-fire.

If you are putting trust in God, put trust (in Him) as regards (your) work: sow (the seed), then rely upon the Almighty." How the beasts once more asserted the superiority of trust in God to exertion.

They all lifted up their voices (to dispute) with him, saying, "Those covetous ones who sowed (the seed of) means

Myriads on myriads of men and women-why, then, did they remain deprived of fortune?

From the beginning of the world myriads of generations have 950 opened a hundred mouths, like dragons:

Those clever people devised plots (of such power) that the mountain thereby was torn up from its foundation.

The Glorious (God) described their plots (when He said): (though their guile be such) that the tops of the mountains might be moved thereby.

(But) except the portion which came to pass (was predestined)