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5
2046-2070

  • Be always working, do not pay heed to that (hope of being enabled to dispense with work): keep scraping away the earth of the (bodily) well little by little.
  • To every one who suffers a tribulation there is revealed a treasure: every one who makes an earnest endeavour comes into a fortune.
  • The Prophet hath said that acts of genuflexion and prostration (in the ritual prayer) are (equivalent to) knocking the door-ring of (mystical) attainment on the Divine Portal.
  • When any one continues to knock that door-ring, felicity peeps out for his sake.
  • How the Amír who was the author of the mischievous intrigue came at midnight with his officers to open the chamber of Ayáz, and saw the sheepskin jacket and rustic shoon hanging (there) and supposed that this was a trick and pretence; and how he dug up every suspected corner and brought excavators and made holes in the walls and discovered nothing and fell into confusion and despair. So (it is with such) evil thinking men (as those) who imagined vain things about the work of the prophets and saints, saying that they were magicians and self-advertisers and (only) sought to occupy the chief position (among their people): after having investigated, they are covered with confusion, but it does not avail them.
  • Those trusted (officers) came to the door of the chamber: they began to search for the treasure and the gold and the jar. 2050
  • A number of them, (urged) by vain desire, unlocked the door with infinite dexterity and skill;
  • For it was a formidable lock with intricate bolts: he (Ayáz) had selected it from (many other) locks,
  • Not that he was avaricious of silver and riches and crude (uncoined) gold, (but) in order to hide that secret (of his) from the vulgar,
  • “Lest” (so he thought) “some people imagine evil, (while) others call me a hypocrite.”
  • With the man of lofty aspiration the soul's secrets are kept from the base (worldlings) more safely than the ruby in the mine. 2055
  • To fools gold seems better than the soul; in the opinion of (spiritual) kings gold is to be scattered on the soul (as an offering).
  • In greed of gold they (the officers) were hastening rapidly (to the chamber), (though) their reason was saying, “No; not so fast.”
  • Greed runs in vain towards the mirage, (though) reason says, "Look carefully: it is not water."
  • Greed was predominant (in them), and gold had become (dear to them) as their souls: at that moment the cry of reason was unheard.
  • Greed and its clamours had become hundredfold; wisdom and its suggestions had vanished, 2060
  • To the end that he (the greedy man) may fall into the pit of delusion, and then hearken to the reproaches of Wisdom.
  • When his wind (idle self-conceit) is broken by imprisonment in the trap,the rebuking soul gets the upper hand over him.
  • Until his head comes against the wall of affliction, his deaf ear will not listen to the counsel of his heart.
  • Greed for walnut-cake and sugar makes the ears of children deaf to admonitions;
  • (Only) when the pain of his abscess begins do his (the child's) ears become open to good advice. 2065
  • Then the party (of searchers), with cupidity and a hundred kinds of vain desire, opened the chamber.
  • They swarmed in through the doorway, jostling each other, like vermin (falling) on fetid buttermilk.
  • They (the insects) fall on it triumphantly, like lovers, (but) there is no possibility of drinking, and both wings are stuck.
  • They (the officers) looked to the left and to the right: there was (only) a torn pair of shoon and a sheepskin jacket.
  • After (having looked), they said (to one another), “This place is not without balm: the shoon are only (displayed) here as a blind. 2070