Lines From The Masnavi

O brother! Collect your wits for an instant and consider how, from moment to moment, there is autumn and spring within you!

Behold the garden of the heart: green and moist and fresh! Full of rosebuds and cypresses and jasmine! Boughs hidden by the multitude of leaves, vast plain and high palace, hidden by the multitude of flowers...

How should a rock be covered with the verdure of Spring? Become earth that you may grow flowers of many hues! For years you have been a heart-jagging rock; just once, for the sake of experiment, be earth!

~Mevlana, Masnavi, Bk. I: 1896-98, 1911-12.
Nicholson translation, slightly amended.