And would that the bond between You and me were thriving,
While all that lies between me and the rest of creation were in ruins.
If affection from You is sound, then everything is easy,
For everything that walks upon the dust is itself but dust. (1)

It would have spared us much of this long discourse to recall three brief sentences that some of the early generations used to write to one another. Were a servant to engrave them upon the tablet of his heart and recite them with every breath, that would still fall short of what they deserve. They are:
“Whoever rectifies his inner state, Allah will rectify his outward state; whoever mends what is between himself and Allah, Allah will mend what is between him and people; and whoever labors for his Hereafter, Allah will spare him the burdens of his worldly life.”

These words carry their own proof; their very existence proclaims their truth. Success is in Allah’s hand—there is no deity but Him and no Lord besides Him.

He—may Allah have mercy on him and be pleased with him—then said: “Let my companions excuse these words, for, by Allah, they are the sigh of a constricted breast and the breath of a fevered soul.

I cast my gaze about but see none whom I love,
While among the clan there are many I do not love at all.

Such is the very breath of one whose self has begun to devour itself; it is both the subject and the predicate, from it springs both song and rapture.

No tent-mate smitten with yearning is there to share with him
Talk of Layla, nor any passionate lover to vie with him.

Thus your lover longed to converse with one whose homelands have grown distant and whose place of visitation lies far away; he is, as was said: