The Man Who Planted Thorns
To-morrow and To-morrow
Masnavi II.1227–1240 · tr. R. A. Nicholson, 1926As (for example) that callous fair-spoken person planted a thornbush in the middle of the road.The wayfarers reproached him and oftentimes told him to dig it up: he dug it not up.Every moment the thornbush was growing bigger: the people’s feet were streaming with blood from its pricks.The people’s clothes were being rent by the thorns: the feet of the poor were being wounded pitiably.When the Governor said to him with earnestness, “Dig this up,” he replied, “Yes, I will dig it up some day.”For a long while he promised (to dig it up) to-morrow and to-morrow; (meantime) his thornbush became robust in constitution.One day the Governor said to him, “O false promiser, go forward with my affair, do not creep back.”He replied, “O uncle, the days are between us.” “Make haste,” said he, “do not put off payment of my debt.”You who say “To-morrow,” be aware of this, that with every day that time is coming (and going),That evil tree is growing younger, while this digger is waxing old and sorely distressed.The thornbush (is) in (process of gaining) strength and (in) ascent; its digger (is) in (process of) aging and decline.The thornbush every day and every moment is green and fresh; its digger is every day more sickly and withered.It is growing younger, you older: be quick and do not waste your time!Know that every single bad habit of yours is a thornbush: many a time, after all, have its thorns pierced your foot.
- Earliest record
- 1278No autograph survives. The oldest witness is the Qoniya manuscript (G), “transcribed in A.H. 677-A.D. 1278”, five years after Rūmī's death at Konya on 17 December 1273. Nicholson's 1926 translation of Book II was not made from it; his 1930 Appendix lists every change G would require, and for II.1227–1240 it lists none — its nearest entries are at vv. 1141 and 1254 — so Nicholson's English for these lines needs no change to agree with the oldest copy.
- Said to date from
- the 1260sasserted by Rūmī's own date at Masnavi II.7, in the proem to Book II: “The date of beginning this gainful (spiritual) traffic was in the year six hundred and sixty-two” — A.H. 662, which ran from November 1263 to October 1264. Book II therefore cannot be earlier, and the proem's first line says the poem had been “delayed for a while” after Book I.
Rūmī's second remedy is company: the friend of God's light quenches the fire, as Hell begs the believer, “thy light has taken away the burning of my fire” (II.1249).
Nicholson, The Mathnawí of Jalálu'ddín Rúmí, vol. II (1926), Book II, vv. 1244–1249, p. 285.
A man plants a thornbush on the road and promises to dig it up “to-morrow”; it grows as he ages.
More context
Mathnawī II.1227–1240, the tale Nicholson's running head calls “The Man who let his Thornbush grow”. A callous, fair-spoken man plants a thornbush in the middle of the road. Wayfarers bleed on it. When the Governor tells him to dig it up he answers “some day”, then “to-morrow and to-morrow”, then that “the days are between us”. Rūmī turns at once to the reader: the bush grows younger every day while its digger grows older, and every bad habit is such a thornbush. The tale caps Rūmī's plea at II.1215–1226 to use one's youth before old age comes. Old age brings eyes grown dim, teeth gone out of use, “the ass lame, and the way long”. After it Rūmī offers two remedies. One is to strike with the axe as ʿAlī struck the gate of Khaybar. The other is to join the thorns to the rosebush, the light of the friend of God.
Light
It pictures delay as a race: the bush grows younger as its would-be uprooter grows older, so every “to-morrow” worsens the odds.
Shadow
Its urgency leans on dread: the lines before it tally a failing body, teeth gone, eyes dim, before any remedy comes.