Rumi's Masnavi - If to-night the mouth of the cooking-pot is left open, yet the cat must have discretion.

If to-night the mouth of the cooking-pot is left open, yet the cat must have discretion.

If that glorious one (the saint) has feigned to be asleep, he is (really) very much awake: do not carry off his turban. 2090

How long, O contumacious man devoid of (spiritual) excellence, wilt thou utter these Devil's enchantments in the presence of God's elect one?

This company (of the elect) have a hundred thousand forbearances, every one of which is (immovable) as a hundred mountains.

Their forbearance makes a fool of the wary and causes the keen-witted man with a hundred eyes to lose his way.

Their forbearance, like fine choice wine, mounts by nice degrees up to the brain.

Behold the man drunken with that marvellous (earthly) wine: the drunken man has begun to move crookedly like the queen (in chess). 2095

From (the effect of) that quickly-catching wine the (vigorous) youth is falling in the middle of the road, like an aged man.

Especially (consider the effect of) this (spiritual) wine which is from the jar of Balá—not the wine whereof the intoxication lasts (only) one night;

(But) that (wine) from which, (by drinking it) at dessert and in migration (from place to place), the Men of the Cave (the Seven Sleepers) lost their reason for three hundred and nine years.