Showing that the life of the self comes from forming ideals and bringing them to birth

Life is preserved by purpose:
Because of the goal its caravan‑bell tinkles.
Life is latent in seeking,
Its origin is hidden in desire.
Keep desire alive in thy heart,
Lest thy little dust become a tomb.
Desire is the soul of this world of hue and scent,
The nature of everything is a storehouse of desire.
Desire sets the heart dancing in the breast,
And by its glow the breast is made bright as a mirror.
It gives to earth the power of soaring,
It is a Khizr to the Moses of perception.
From the flame of desire the heart takes life,
And when it takes life, all dies that is not true.
When it refrains from forming desires,
Its pinion breaks and it cannot soar.
Desire keeps the self in perpetual uproar:
It is a restless wave of the self's sea.
Desire is a noose for hunting ideals,
A binder of the book of deeds.
Negation of desire is death to the living,
Even as absence of heat extinguishes the flame.
What is the source of our wakeful eye?
Our delight in seeing hath taken visible shape.
The partridge's leg is derived from the elegance of its gait,
The nightingale's beak from its endeavour to sing.
Away from the seed‑bed, the reed became happy:
The music was released from its prison.
What is the essence of the mind that strives after new discoveries and scales the heavens?
Knowest thou what works this miracle?
'Tis desire that enriches Life,
And the mind is a child of its womb.
What are social organisation, customs and laws?
What is the secret of the novelties of science?
A desire which realised itself by its own strength
And burst forth from the heart and took shape.
Nose, hand, brain, eye, and ear,
Thought, imagination, feeling, memory, and understanding –
All these are weapons devised by Life for self‑preservation
In its ceaseless struggle.
The object of science and art is not knowledge,
The object of the garden is not the bud and the flower.
Science is an instrument for the preservation of Life,
Science is a means of invigorating the self.
Science and art are servants of Life,
Slaves born and bred in its house.
Rise, O thou who art strange to Life 's mystery,
Rise intoxicated with the wine of an ideal:
An ideal shining as the dawn,
A blazing fire to all that is other than God;
An ideal higher than Heaven –
Winning, captivating, enchanting men's hearts,
A destroyer of ancient falsehood,
Fraught with turmoil, and embodiment of the Last Day.
We live by forming ideals,