romance and the sea

Get up! Let's go to the garden by moonlight

Where flowers burn the midnight oil bright.

Our ship was ice-bound for two months or three;

Brothers, now it's time for the open sea.

#1215: From Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi

Search words: garden

I've been neglecting the garden and feeling bad about it, wondering what's going on. Perhaps I need to look at the symbolism of the garden. The word garden turned up a handful of times and I chose this quatrain because I was thinking just last evening how I could do most of my chores in the evening just as well as in the day, just not the garden. No one gardens at night. Here Rumi is asking me to enjoy the garden at night, perhaps more correctly to enjoy the garden of the night.

I'm surprised by the image of an ice-bound ship. It's not something Rumi would have experienced, living mainly in Turkey. However, there are colder climes just North and this phenomenon could have been more common on the Northern shores of the Black Sea. When the ice melted, when spring came, the ships could then have emerged through the Bosporous Straits into the Mediterranean Sea which would seem open in comparison to the Black.

I find the juxtaposition of these images quite bewildering. There is the romantic, cosy garden and then the bold, heroic venturing forth. It isn't all love and delight in the spirit world, there is plenty there for the manly to enjoy.