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THE TABJUMAN AL-ASHAVAQ (XIV) 75-

2. My desire is for tlie lightning and its gleam, not for the
places and the earth.
3. Tlie east wind related to me from them a tradition handed
down succe.ssively from distracted thoughts, from my
passion, from anguish, from my tribulation,
■4. From rapture, from my reason, from yearning, from ardour,
from tears, from my eyelid, from fire, from my heart,
5. That ‘ He whom thou lovest is between thy ribs ; the
breaths toss him from side to side
G. I said to the east wind, ''Bring a message to him and say
that he is the enkindler of the fire within mj’- heart.
7. If it shall be quenclied, then everlasting union, and if
it shall burn, then no blame to the lover ! ’

CoJIM EN TARY
1. He refers to the vision of God in created things, viz. the
manifestation in forms, and this causes him to cleave to
phenomena, because the manifestation appears ir£ them.
‘ Tlie east,’ i.e. the place of phenomenal manifestation.
‘ If it had flashed in the west,’ i.e. if it had been a mani­
festation of tlie Divine essence to the lover’s heai't, he would
liave longed for that purer manifestation in the world of
purity and mystery.
2. He saj's, ‘ I desire the forms in which the manifestation
takes place only in so far as they are a locus for the mani-
fe.station itself.’
I
3. The world of breaths H jJU) communicated to me
degree in the manifestations. The first degree is the
the inward meaning of these phenomenal forms.
: the fourth
4. ‘ Rapture ’ (literally, ‘ intoxication,’

, and the third
.
second
‘ From my reason,’ because intoxication transports the
rea.son and takes away from it whatever it has.
5. ‘ The breaths,’ etc., i.e. the overwhelming awe inspired by
this manifestation produces in him various ecstasies
7. He says, ‘ If the awful might of this manifestation
shall be veiled through the permanence of the Divine