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پس کلابهی تن کجا ساکن شود ** چون سر رشتهی ضمیرش میکشد
- How, then, should the reel, which is the body, become still, when the thread's end, which is the mind, is pulling it?
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تاسهی تو شد نشان آن کشش ** بر تو بیکاری بود چون جان کنش
- The sign of that pulling is your anguish: to be inactive is to you like the death-agony.
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این جهان و آن جهان زاید ابد ** هر سبب مادر اثر از وی ولد 1000
- This world and that world are for ever giving birth: every cause is a mother, the effect is the child (born) from it.
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چون اثر زایید آن هم شد سبب ** تا بزاید او اثرهای عجب
- When the effect was born, that too became a cause, so that it might give birth to wondrous effects.
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این سببها نسل بر نسل است لیک ** دیدهای باید منور نیک نیک
- These causes are generation on generation, but it needs a very well illumined eye (to see all the links in their chain).”
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شاه با او در سخن اینجا رسید ** یا بدید از وی نشانی یا ندید
- The King, in conversation with him, arrived at this point: he either saw or did not see a sign.
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گر بدید آن شاه جویا دور نیست ** لیک ما را ذکر آن دستور نیست
- If that searching King saw (such a sign), ’tis not strange; but we are not permitted to mention it.
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چون ز گرمابه بیامد آن غلام ** سوی خویشش خواند آن شاه و همام 1005
- When that (other) slave came from the warm bath, that King and lofty personage called him to his presence,
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گفت صحا لک نعیم دایم ** بس لطیفی و ظریف و خوب رو
- (And) said, “Health (to you)! Lasting happiness be yours! You are very fine and elegant and good-looking.
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ای دریغا گر نبودی در تو آن ** که همیگوید برای تو فلان
- Oh, alas! If there were not in you that which so-and-so says about you,