When we seek to house our grain, pile a goodly store,
Pride, a hidden mouse, is there nibbling evermore;
Till upon the harvest day, lo, no golden heap,
But a mildewed mass of chaff maggots overcreep.
Many a brilliant spark is born where the hammers ply,
But a lurking thief is there; prompt, with finger sly,
Spark on spark he puts them out, sparks which might have soared
Perish underneath his touch. Help us then, O Lord!
What with gin and trap and snare, pitfall and device,
How shall we poor sinners reach Thy fair paradise?

Again, in contradiction to logical pantheism Jalaluddin lays stress on
man's free-will and responsibility, as in the following illustration:--

On the frontier set, the warden of a fort,
Far from his monarch and his monarch's court,
Holds the fort, let foemen bluster as they may,
Nor for fear or favour will his trust betray;
Far from his monarch, on the empire's edge,
He, with his master, keeps unbroken pledge;
Surely then his lord his worth will higher own,
Than their prompt obedience who surround his throne;
In the Master's absence a little work done well
Weighs more than a great one when his eyes compel;
_Now_ is the time to show who faith and trust will keep,
Once probation over, faith and trust are cheap.

However much individual Sufis may have fallen into Antinomianism and
acted as if there was no essential difference between good and evil, the
great Sufi teachers have always enjoined self-mortification, quoting the
saying, "Die before you die." This dying is divided by them into three
kinds: "black death" (suffering oppression from others), "red death"
(mortifying the flesh), and "white death" (suffering hunger). Jalaluddin
illustrates this by the following parable:--

A merchant from India a parrot had brought,
And pent in a narrow cage, sorrow-distraught
With longing for freedom. One day the good man
Determined to try with his wares Hindustan;
So he said to his parrot, 'What gift shall I bring
From the land you were born in--what curious thing?'
The parrot replied, 'There are kinsfolk of mine
Flying blithe in those woods, for whose freedom I pine;
(Oh, the green woods of India!). Go, tell them my state--
A captive in grip of implacable fate--
And say, "Is it justice that I should despair
While you, where you list, can flash swift through the air,
Can peck at the pineapples, ba