Analysis of Because I cannot sleep

Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi 1207 (Balkh) – 1273 (Konya )



Because I cannot sleep
I make music at night.
I am troubled by the one
whose face has the color of spring flowers.
I have neither sleep nor patience,
neither a good reputation nor disgrace.
A thousand robes of wisdom are gone.
All my good manners have moved a thousand miles away.
The heart and the mind are left angry with each other.
The stars and the moon are envious of each other.
Because of this alienation the physical universe
is getting tighter and tighter.
The moon says, 'How long will I remain
suspended without a sun?'
Without Love's jewel inside of me,
let the bazaar of my existence be destroyed stone by stone.
O Love, You who have been called by a thousand names,
You who know how to pour the wine
into the chalice of the body,
You who give culture to a thousand cultures,
You who are faceless but have a thousand faces,
O Love, You who shape the faces
of Turks, Europeans, and Zanzibaris,
give me a glass from Your bottle,
or a handful of being from Your Branch.
Remove the cork once more.
Then we'll see a thousand chiefs prostrate themselves,
and a circle of ecstatic troubadours will play.
Then the addict will be freed of craving.
and will be resurrected,
and stand in awe till Judgement Day.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIIJIKCLMNOLDPPDQRSTHUVH
Poetic Form
Metre 011101 111011 1110101 1110101110 11101110 1001010101 010111011 1111011010101 0100111101110 0100111001110 01110010010010 11010010 011111101 0100101 011100111 100111010101111 111111110101 11111101 010101010 11110101010 111101101010 11111010 1101001 11011110 101110111 010111 11101011001 00101010111 1001111110 011010 01011101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,192
Words 226
Sentences 16
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 31
Lines Amount 31
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 958
Words per stanza (avg) 223
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 14, 2023

1:08 min read
107

Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, and more popularly simply as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, faqih, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran. more…

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