English Translations - International Iqbal Society - Allama Iqbal

talha_ahad@yahoo.com (Talha Ahad)

The style may not he vivid and lively, still
Perhaps the meaning may penetrate thy mind:
The faith of men of God and ecstasy
Is like the call to prayer echoing in the skies;
The faith of the mullah, a vermin of the earth,
Is the telling of beads, and mumblings in the dust.

talha_ahad@yahoo.com (Talha Ahad)

Kings and crowns and armies
Are the miracles of piety;
Piety is the king of king!
Greatest of the great.

What does knowledge gain?
Purity of reason;
What does piety aim at?
Purity of the eye and the heart.

Knowledge brings wisdom,
And piety the spirit of prophets,
Knowledge is a seeker,
Piety is a discoverer.

Knowledge is information;
Piety is vision;
Knowledge forbids rapture;
In piety it is a virtue.

When Selfhood as a weapon
Is reinforced by piety,
A soldier has the power
Of a phalanx of armed men.

If, encased in dust,
Thy heart has power supernal,
Thy look alone can pierce and shatter
The glassy sphere of the sun and moon.

talha_ahad@yahoo.com (Talha Ahad)

Salman* the mellifluous,
In words of power and wit,
Said the world is too narrow
For men of skill and daring.

But one should have a lion’s heart,
An eagle’s piercing eye,
Then one can live without the light
Of a lexicon and learning.

Ape not the ways of the nightingale,
Nor those of the peacock,
For the one is but a voice,
And the other is but a colour.

talha_ahad@yahoo.com (Talha Ahad)

The training grounds of valour
Arid power. in the past,
Have nothing, to foster now,
But cunning and cowardice.

In those who tend our flock,
I have not yet found
The shepherd’s spirit that leads
To the power of a Moses.

Birds of spring like not
To sing in this garden,
Their voices are stifled,
And their breath is choked.

Ecstasy doth come sometimes
To an illumined soul;
At other. times to a soil
Benighted, in the abyss.

talha_ahad@yahoo.com (Talha Ahad)

Do not get engrossed In the dawning day and night;
There is another world, With neither day nor night.

Who knows what tumult The Final Day will bring?
The mosques and the schools Are silent about that day.

The blessings of this culture Are artifice and vanity;
Radiant beauty doth not Seek artificial aids.

Even the Orphean lyre Falters and fails sometimes;
Even the greatest master Will nod as Homer does.

talha_ahad@yahoo.com (Talha Ahad)

The crescent has surpassed
The constellation’s might
And grown in plenitude
With arduous labour.

In vain does a bud
Blossom in confined air,
If it., bloom has been
Denied the rays of the sun.

If thy eye is pure,
So will be thy heart,
For the heart mirrors, all
That the eye ever sees.

The mountain flower grows not
In gardens well trimmed,
Despising,, to keep company
With meaner growths oil earth.

Who cares for the wars,
Fought by mighty kings?
But the songs of mortal poets
Enjoy an immortal fame.

talha_ahad@yahoo.com (Talha Ahad)

Arise! The bugle calls! It is time to leave!
Woe be to the traveller who still awaits!

The confines of a monastery suit thee not—
The times have changed, thou seest, and so hast thou.

Thorny is the path, O seeker of salvation!
Whether thy heart is the slave or the master of reason.

The Selfhood of one who bemoans all change,
Is yet a prisoner of time, shackled by days and nights.

O songbird! Thy song is well rewarded when
It infuses fire into the rose’s bloom.

talha_ahad@yahoo.com (Talha Ahad)

New worlds will he conquered
By men of vision now;
Their eyes should not be riveted
On regions known to all.

The Western world bustles with life;
Schools echo with song,
Warmed by youthful bodies,
Drunk. with youthful glances,

I care not for the philosopher,
Or for The mullah,
One is the heart’s death;
The other is death of thought.

I dare not question the power
Of law—makers of the land,
But what I want, and they do not,
Is a widening of the mind.

Pervez’s wealth can be bought,
His luxury procured, But a g
But a gift of God is the wealth
Of Farhad’s sacrifice.

I have revealed the secrets
Of esoteric life,
To liberate the thought
Of schools and monasteries.

talha_ahad@yahoo.com (Talha Ahad)

Neither the power of kings,
Nor the might of armies,
Has the force of the pious,
Indifferent to both the worlds.

‘There is no God but God’,
Is the essence of the secret.,
The world is a temple,
And the man of God is Abraham.

Thy world is the world
Thou dost create thyself.,
And not the world of brick and mortar
Before thy outward eyes.

Thy dust that should aspire
Beyond the moon and stars,
Is languishing still on its way,
Fettered and earth—bound.

The West is faced with a torrent—
Gigantic, monster—like,
A torrent that will engulf
Its power over the world.

My sighs by day and night
Open a world anew,
Seek this world of mine
In the ethereal region.

Though I have the remains
Of a potent wine left,
Better it is than the emptiness
Of monasteries and schools.

talha_ahad@yahoo.com (Talha Ahad)

Cut the Gordian knot,
And capture thy jewel;
Be of courage, be united,
Have a spirit free.

The ascetic fakir,
Clad only in rags,
Is mightier in power,
Than kings that rule the earth.

Farabi had a mind;
Rumi had a soul;
One ended in astonishment,
The other in absorption.

Choose the cunning of reason,
Or love and the help of God;
Either the guile of the West,
Or the valour of the Turk—,

Either a Muslim’s path,
Or servitude to the idols;
And a cry of passionate faith,
In Kaaba or the temple.

Whether a king or a fakir,
A master or a slave,
What thou needst most,
Is courage with abandon.