Precious Pearls — Page 16
18 In a single instant, this earth shall toss and turn The streams of blood will flow like water in a gulf. Those who possessed white garments in the evening, The morn will turn them like as the trees of sycamore The people and the birds will lose all their senses All doves and nightingales will forget their songs. That time and hour shall be very hard on every traveller They shall lose their way befuddled and out of control. With the blood of the dead, the waterways in the mountains Will turn to red as if they were scarlet wine. All men and Jinn will be distressed with this fear if Tsar Were around, even he would be in a sorry state that moment. That Sign of God will be like a catastrophe The heavens will assail, drawing their daggers. (39/445-454) Such calamity shall visit the towns and the hamlets Which never had a like in the world at all. The places of joy will at once turn into places of mourning; Those who celebrated in joy will beat their breasts in grief. Those tall palaces and those high mansions They will be knocked down as low as a hollow. With a single roll, the houses will become heaps of earth The lives that will be lost will have no count. But there is mercy of God and there is no fear from it For those who bow at His Court in self-abasement. (41/10-14) Although he himself passed away from this world in 1908, later events unfolded the true nature of this monumental tragedy that befell mankind in the form of the two World Wars. These conflicts of unprecedented proportions spread like wild fire across the face of the earth and claimed human life in the tens of millions. During the process, innumerable hamlets, towns and cities were laid to utter waste, and the seeds of mistrust and suspicion sown in these hostilities have lasted among the various nations until today. What price do we human beings pay for rejecting the noble emissaries of God! The poetry of Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad can be best described as reformatory and mystical in nature. In the Eastern culture, particularly in Islamic lands, mystical language is laced with certain allegory and symbolism with which a Western reader may or may not be completely familiar. For the benefit of the reader, therefore, some of these imageries are described below: To see the Face or Visage of the Belovèd is the ultimate objective of the mystic or the God- seeker. This Face, that lies hidden and veiled , can only be seen through a persistent and often life-long striving by the seeker. The wine —and by association the wine-cup —stand for the knowledge of God’s cognisance, or gnosis, through which the seeker understands the true attributes of God.