The Diwan of Abu'l-Ala

We that with song our pilgrimage beguile,
With purple islands which a sunset bore,
We, sunk upon the sacrilegious shore,
May parley with oblivion awhile.

I think our world is not a place of rest,
But where a man may take his little ease,
Until the landlord whom he never sees
Gives that apartment to another guest.

Live well! Be wary of this life, I say;
Do not o'erload yourself with righteousness.
Behold! the sword we polish in excess,
We gradually polish it away.

Life is a flame that flickers in the wind,
A bird that crouches in the fowler's net—
Nor may between her flutterings forget
That hour the dreams of youth were unconfined.

For as a gate of sorrow-land unbars
The region of unfaltering delight,
So may you gather from the fields of night
That harvest of diviner thought, the stars.

Now this religion happens to prevail
Until by that religion overthrown,—
Because men dare not live with men alone,
But always with another fairy-tale.

Aye, when the torch is low and we prepare
Beyond the notes of revelry to pass—
Old Silence will keep watch upon the grass,
The solemn shadows will assemble there.

The days are dressing all of us in white,
For him who will suspend us in a row.
But for the sun there is no death. I know
The centuries are morsels of the night.