یک زمان بی‏کار نتوانی نشست ** تا بدی یا نیکیی از تو نجست‏

You cannot sit inactive for one moment: (you cannot rest) till some badness or goodness has issued from you.

این تقاضاهای کار از بهر آن ** شد موکل تا شود سرت عیان‏

These demands (cravings) for action were appointed in order that your inward consciousness should come clearly into (outward) view.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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).”

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.

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.

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,