Allama Iqbal's Poetry

Allama Iqbal's Poetry

Gabriel’s Wing

Content

Arise in order that we may make the order of the sun’s...

The heart of a diamond can be cut by the leaf of a flower;

My epiphany of passion causes commotion in the precinct of...

All potent wine is emptied of Thy cask;

If the stars have strayed—To whom do the heavens belong,...

Bright are Your tresses: brighten them even more:

Make our hearts the seats of mercy and love,

Whether or not it moves you, at least listen to my...

Give to the youth my sighs of dawn;

What avails love when life is so ephemeral?

My scattered dust charged with Love The shape of heart may...

Thy world the fish’s and the winged thing’s bower;

Contrary runs our planet, the stars whirl fast, oh Saki!

Due to Thy benevolence, I am not without merit,

Set out once more that cup, that wine, oh Saki—

He is the essence of the Space as well as the Placeless...

My Saki made me drink the wine of There is no god but He:

At times, Love is a wanderer who has no home,

Slow fire of longing—wealth beyond compare;

Love, sometimes, is the solitude of Nature;

Have You forgotten then my heart of old,

Grant me the absorption of the souls of the past,

By dint of Spring the poppy-cup, with vintage red is...

I learnt from Abul Hasan:

Mine ill luck the same and same, O Lord, the coldness on...

This reason of mine knows not good from evil;

Methought my racing field lay under the skies,

To be God is to have charge of land and sea;

Reason is either luminous, or it seeks proofs;

This Adam—is he the sovereign of land and sea?

Lovely, oh Lord, this fleeting world; but why

All Nature’s vastness cannot contain you, oh

Who is this composer of ghazals, who is burningly...

The breath of Gabriel if God on me bestow,

Fabric of earth and wind and wave! Who is the secret, you...

Thou art yet region-bound, transcend the limits of space;

The free by dint of faqr Life’s secrets can disclose:

Hill and vale once more under the poppy’s lamps are...

Muslims are born with a gift to charm, to persuade;

Through Love the song of Life Begets its rhythmic flow:

Of passion’s glow your heart is blank, Your glances are...

A host of peril though you face, Yet your tongue with...

Rely on the witness of the phenomenal world

These Western nymphs A challenge to the eye and the heart,

A heart awake to man imparts Umar’s brains and Hyder’s...

In the coquetry and fierceness of the self there is no...

A recreant captain, a battle-line thrown back,

At London, winter wind, like sword, was biting though,

The ancient fane in which we live Has heaps of thorns at...

The way to renounce is To conquer the earth and heaven;

Though reason to the portal guide,

The self of man is ocean vast, And knows no depth or bound:

The morning breeze has whispered to me a secret,

Thy vision and thy hands are chained, earth-bound,

The mind can give you naught, But what with doubt is...

The splendour of a monarch great Is worthless for the free...

You are neither for the earth nor for the heaven:

O Prisoner of Space! You are not far from the Placeless...

My mind on me bestowed a thinker’s gaze,

From the heavens comes an answer to our long cries at last:

All life is voyaging, all life in motion,

Every atom pants for glory: greed

This wonder by some glance is wrought, or Fortune’s...

What should I ask the sages about my origin:

When through the Love man conscious grows of respect...

Once more I feel the urge to wail and weep at dead of night:

Devoid of passion’s roar I can exist no more:

Nature before your mind present,

Alas! The mullah and the priest, conduct their sermons so

The magic old to life is brought by means of present...

Other worlds exist beyond the stars—

The West seeks to make life a perpetual feast;

If self with knowledge strong becomes, Gabriel it can...

The schools bestow no grace of fancy fine,

Events as yet folded in the scroll of Time

To Lover’s glowing fire and flame the mystic order has...

Intuition in the West was clever in its power,

O manly heart, the goal you seek is hard to gain like gem...

A monarch’s pomp and mighty arms can never give such glee,

On me no subtle brain though Nature spent,

By men whose eyes see far and wide new cities shall be...

To God the angels did complain 'Gainst Iqbal and did say

Over the tussle of heart and head

Arise! The bugle calls! It is time to leave!

The Gnostic and the common throng new life have gained...

Through many a stage the crescent goes and then at last...

In the maze of eve and morn, o man awake, do not be lost:

The cloisters, once the rearing place of daring men and...

From Salman, singer sweet, this subtle point I know:

The crown, the throne, and mighty arms by faqr are wrought...

In my craze that knows no bound, of the Mosque I made the...

Knowledge and reason work in manner strange,

The rituals of the Sanctuary unsanctified!

O wave! Plunge headlong into the dark seas,

Am I bound by space, or beyond space?

Confused is the nature of my love for Thee,

I was in the solitude of selfhood lost,

Faith, like Abraham, sits down in the fire;

Arabian fervour has within it the Persian melodies,

A restless heart throbs in every atom;

I wish someone saw how I play the flute—

Thy vision is not lofty, ethereal,

Neither the Muslim nor his power survives;

Distracted are thy eyes in myriad ways;

Selfhood in the world of men is prophethood;

The beauty of mystic love is shaped in song;

Where is the moving spirit of my life?

Thy bosom has breath; it does not have a heart;

I am not a pursuer, nor a traveller,

Pure in nature thou art, thy nature is light;

They no longer have that passionate love—

Not translated yet

Dew-drops glisten on flowers that bloom in the spring;

Conquer the world with the power of selfhood,

The mystic's soul is like the morning breeze:

The Mosque of Cordoba

Mu‘tamid’s Lament In Prison

First Date Tree Seeded By Abdul Rahman the First

That blood of pristine vigour is no more;

The veiled secrets are becoming manifest—

Tariq’s Prayer

This revolution of time is eternal;

Song of the Angles

God’s Command

Theorizing is the infidelity of the self:

The Moth and the Firefly

Heaven and the Priest

Church and State

The Earth is God's

Poppy of the Wilderness

Iqbal recited once in a garden in Spring

The Angels Bid Farewell to Adam

Adam Is Received By the Spirit of the Earth

My nature is like the fresh breeze of morn:

The Mentor and The Disciple

Thy body knows not the secrets of thy heart,

Gabriel And Iblis

The mentor exhorted his disciples once:

The Prayer-call

Though I have little of rhetorician’s art,

The Star’s Message

Philosophy and Religion

A Letter from Europe

At Napoleon’s Tomb

To the Punjab Peasant

Nadir Shah of Afghanistan

The Last Testament of Khush-hal Khan Khattak

The Tartar's Dream

Abu al ‘Ala al-Ma‘arri

To the Punjab Pirs

Satan’s Petition

To the Headmaster

The Philosopher

Disciples in Revolt

The Last Will of Harun Rashid

To the Psychologist

Freedom of Thought

The Lion and the Mule

The Ant and the Eagle

1.

In November, 1933, His Majesty the Leader of the Faithful the now-martyred Nadir Shah Ghazi granted the author permission to visit the shrine of The sage Sana‘i of Ghazna. These verses were written in commemoration of the event, in imitation of a famous p
‘We are coming after Sina‘i and Attar.’

All Nature’s vastness cannot contain you, oh
My madness: vain, those wanderings to and fro
In deserts! By selfhood only are the spells
Of sense broken,— that power we did not know.
Rub your eyes, sluggard! Light is Nature’s law,
And not unknown to Ocean its waves flow.
Where reason and revelation war, faith errs
To think the Mystic on his cross its foe,
For God’s pure souls, in thralldom or on thrones,
Have one safe shield, his scorn of this world’s show.
But do not, Gabriel, envy my rapture: better
For Heaven’s dounce folk the prayer and the beads’ neat row!

*

I have seen many a wine-shop East and West;
But here no Saki, there in the grape no glow.
In Iran no more, in Tartary no more,
Those world-renouncers who could overthrow
Great kings; the Prophet’s heir filches and sells
The blankets of the Prophet’s kin. When to
The Lord I was denounced for crying Doomsday
Too soon, by that Archangel who must blow
Its trumpet, God made answer—Is Doomsday far
When Makkah sleeps while China worships?—Though
The bowl of faith finds none to pour, the beaker
Of modern thought brims with the wine of No.
Subdued by the dexterous fiddler’s chords there murmurs
In the lowest string the wail of Europe’s woe—
Her waters that have bred the shark now breed
The storm-wave that will smash its den below!

*

Slavery—exile from the love of beauty:
Beauty—whatever free men reckon so;
Trust no slave’s eyes, clear sight and liberty
Go hand in hand. His own resolves bestow
The empire of To-day on him who fishes
To-morrow’s pearl up from Time’s undertow.
The Frankish glassblowers’ arts can make stone run:
My alchemy makes glass flint-hard. Pharaoh
Plotted and plots against me; but what harm?
Heaven lifts my hand, like Moses’, white as snow;
Earth’s rubbish-heaps can never quell this spark
God struck to light whole deserts, His flambeau!
Love, self-beholding, self-sustaining, stands
Un-awed at the gates of Caesar or Khosro;
If moon or Pleiades fall my prey, what wonder—
Myself bound fast to the Prophet’s saddle-bow!
He—Guide, Last Envoy, Lord of All—lent brightness
Of Sinai to our dust; Love’s eyes, not slow
To kindle, hail him Alpha and Omega,
Chapter, and Word, and Book. I would not go
Pearl-diving there, for reverence of Sina‘i;
But in these tides a million pearls still grow.

Translated by: V.G. Kiernan

All Nature’s vastness cannot contain you, oh

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