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When one’s Beloved is truly so, there is no need
To grovel and whine, to importune and plead.
It would be a shame to take one’s hovel habits to love’s palace,
To make a display of one’s meanness in that holy place.
‘The good women for the good men,’ and God for those who would die;
And neither the heaven nor the Bliss can be won by a lie.
Since fortune has smiled on one in the Beloved’s courtesies
One should walk upright as a man and not dig in dirt with one’s knees.
The sun has kissed the hills millions of times since one was worm.
And thousands of times one has crossed mountains and weathered sea-storm;
And marched out against self to the brave music of the drum,
And toiled to heap up a banquet for the day when the Beloved would come.
The way is to surrender to the Beloved with perfect trust,
To walk upright like a man to the exalted station of dust.
There is no one consistent attitude to be seen in the poems. Different states and moods of the path are responded to and presented for recognition.
This poem follows the line of the previous one but in a more settled and calmer fashion. Avoiding dramatics is a way of avoiding every trace of hypocrisy.
Contrasting with the abasement in some of the poem this one counsels us to walk upright as a man. Remembering one’s heroic past to have got this far can be a help not a hindrance to true surrender in utmost trust.
A bracing return to the heroic mode.