By Dr Muhammad Iqbal (1877 – 1938)

    I have turned my back on that world.

    Where sustenance is called grain and water.

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    I like the solitude of the wilderness­-

    I was always a hermit by nature­-

    No spring breeze, no rose‑plucker, no nightingale,

    And no illness of the songs of love!

    One must avoid the garden‑dwellers

    Their charms are too seductive!

    It is the desert wind that gives effect

    To the stroke of the brave youth in combat.

    It is not that I am hungry for pigeon and dove­-

    Renunciation is the mark of an eagle’s life­-

    To swoop, to withdraw, and to swoop again

    Is but a pretext to keep up blood heat.

    This cast, this west is the pheasants’ world,

    Mine is the boundlessness of the blue sky!

    I am the monk of the kingdom of birds,

    For the eagle is not given to making nests.

     Reference: Iqbal, Muhammad. Bāl-I Jibrīl. Lāhore: Mubārak ʻAlī. Print.

    (Courtesy Ummah Legends)