The Choice is Yours!
If the kings know not their Sustainer they are beggars,
And if the beggars do they are Darius and Jamshed;
Freedom of the heart is sovereignity; stomach is death,
The choice is yours; heart or stomach?
Note: Iqbal placed a great value for disciplining of Selfhood and the cultivation of Ego. Iqbal held the beggar , whose poverty possessed the nature of Hazrat Ali (the fourth Caliph of Islam), to be more superior than Darius and Alexander. Iqbal's own existence was a glowing example of his idea of self-realization. In the above verses, Iqbal exhorts to others what he practiced himself till the dying day.