Wednesday, October 5, 2011

"Know that every redness in the world is from his anger, and every paleness in men’s cheeks is from his poison."



"Love setteth a world aflame at every turn, and he wasteth every land where he carrieth his banner. Being hath no existence in his kingdom; the wise wield no command within his realm. The leviathan of love swalloweth the master of reason and destroyeth the lord of knowledge. He drinketh the seven seas, but his heart’s thirst is still unquenched, and he saith, “Is there yet any more?” 4 He shunneth himself and draweth away from all on earth.

Love’s a stranger to earth and heaven too;
In him are lunacies seventy-and-two. 5

He hath bound a myriad victims in his fetters, wounded a myriad wise men with his arrow. Know that every redness in the world is from his anger, and every paleness in men’s cheeks is from his poison. He yieldeth no remedy but death, he walketh not save in the valley of the shadow; yet sweeter than honey is his venom on the lover’s lips, and fairer his destruction in the seeker’s eyes than a hundred thousand lives. Wherefore must the veils of the satanic self be burned away at the fire of love, that the spirit may be purified and cleansed and thus may know the station of the Lord of the Worlds."

 -Bahá'u'lláh, The Seven Valleys And the Four Valleys, pp. 10-11



4.Qur’án 50:29. 
5.Jalálu’d-Dín Rúmí (1207–1273 A.D.); The Mathnaví. Jalálu’d-Dín, called Mawláná (“our Master”), is the greatest of all Persian Súfí poets, and founder of the Mawlaví “whirling” dervish order






Walker Evans
Library of Congress

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