'ECSTASY


PART 5.....

Thou knowest all about
My past and my present;
I had not known that knowledge
Is a tree without fruit.

That old battle was raged
In my heart again,
Between love, which is all good,
And reason, which is all evil.

Love has a strange beginning,
And a strange end—
It snatches by excuses sometimes,
And drags by force at others.

In the world of passion,
Absence is greater than Presence,
Absence is the pleasure of yearning,
Presence is desire’s death.

In fulfilment in the past.,
Perception I had none;
Though my audacious eye
Was looking for pretences.

The wave’s enduring quest,
The rain-drop’s search to be a pearl,
The heart’s eternal yearning,
Are all before fulfilment.


ALLAMA MUHAMMAD IQBAL'