The poem discusses the transformative power of love according to Jalaluddin Rumi. It states that love can turn adversities like thorns and vinegar into pleasures like roses and sweet wine. It argues that love changes stones to butter and fires to light. The poem asserts that through love, grief becomes joy, lions become harmless, sickness becomes health, and kings become slaves. It presents love as an essence that is at the core of all religions and has the ability to radically change people and situations.

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Love –An Essence of All Religions
By
Jalaluddin Rumi
Stanza1: Through love thorns becomes roses and
Through love vinegar becomes sweet wine,
Through love the stake becomes a throne,
Through love misfortune becomes good fortune,
Through love burning fire becomes pleasing light,
Through love stone becomes soft as butter.
Reference: These verses have been taken from the poem, “Love –An Essence of All
Religions” written by an eminent Persian poet -Jalaluddin Rumi.
Context: In this poem, the poet has drawn our attention to the power and hallmark of love,
which is the soul and spirit of all the religions. Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender
look, which turns adversities into pleasure, for instance, thorns become roses, vinegar becomes
sweet wine, burning fire becomes a bright pleasing light, sickness becomes health and a king
becomes a humble slave. Love is a light, which brightens the dark alley of hate and spreads its
warm tender feelings and hopes. Love is spontaneous and craves expression through joy, through
beauty, through truth, even through tears…Love is like a moment; which is neither lost in
yesteryears nor does it crave for tomorrow. The sole reason of war, hate and suffering in the
world, is religious differences, if all the religions give vent to love, this world can become a safer
place for the future generations. In other words, life is to be fortified by many friendships. To
love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence.
Explanation: In this stanza or verses the poet Jalaluddin Rumi reflects that love is a great
force in human life, which brings radical changes. Although, life is the bed of thorns, replete with
dread and destruction, yet according to Rumi, it can become a bed of roses with sweet fragrance
and warm smiles, if it (life) is mingled with love. Love can change pain into pleasure through its
miraculous and supernatural effect. It is love, which alters a post to which a person is tired for
execution to throne and inspires him for the execution of his goals/ambitions. Rumi further
illustrates that love is the force which mould the detestable (hateful) passions into everlasting
warm feeling. Through love a stones-hearted and stubborn (inflexible) becomes gentle, humble
and flexible to compassionate feeling. With sword and hate one cannot bring the whole world to
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subjugation/subjection, it is only love, which conquers the undefeatable and paves all the hurdles,
as it is well remarked by Martin Luther King:
“Hate cannot drive out hate
Only love can do that”.
Stanza 2. Through love grief becomes a joy,
Through love lion becomes harmless
Through love sickness become health
Through love the wrath seems to be a mercy,
Through love the dead rise to life,
Through love the king becomes a slave.
Explanation: In these verses, Jalaluddin Rumi highlights the soothing and healing power
of love. It consoles the poor grieved people and makes life worth of enjoying. It reforms the
callous man to humble and celebrated citizen. According to Rumi even the ferocious beast i.e lion
can become as harmless and humble. It is love, which helps man to get rid of physical and
spiritual sickness. It brings a deprived and dejected man to life. Love derives away all human
worries, as it is well said by Sophocles:
One word
Frees us all the weight and pain of life;
That word is love.
Love has also civilizing effect, which can make a proud, cruel and obstinate (unyielding)
king as humble as slave.
In this poem, the poet Jalaluddin Rumi is of the view that love is a great force in private
and public life. It draws the map of human emotion towards affection and kindness. It is like a
feeling that emanates from the heart and extends through the blood to every cell of the body. Hate
can not bring the world to subjection and the best deed of man, according to Hazrat Ali(R.A), is
to forgive and forget. Love is greater than illusions and as strong as death. Love is like a lamp,
which needs to be fed out of oil of another’s heart; otherwise its flame burns low.
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SHAHEEN ACADEMY, G-6-1/3, ISLAMABAD. PH-2279319.