Mohamets Gesang

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

Shaykh Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (r.a.) wrote the famous song in praise of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.), Mohamets Gesang.  The meaning of the Prophet’s (s.a.w.) reality is put into the metaphor of the stream, starting from the smallest beginning and growing to be an immense spiritual power, expanding, unfolding, and gloriously ending in the ocean, the symbol for divinity.  He described the Prophet (s.a.w.) as a spiritual flood, the faydhah, in carrying humanity with him like the stream does with small brooks and eventually turns into a river racing to the sea.  You can hear it sung here: Mohamets Gesang. 

“See the rock-born stream!

Like the gleam

Of a star so bright.

Kindly spirits,

High above the clouds,

Nourished him while youthful,

In the copse between the cliffs.

Young and fresh.

From the clouds he danceth

Down upon the marble rocks;

Then tow’rd heaven,

Leaps exulting.

Through the mountain-passes,

Chaseth he, the colour’d pebbles,

And, advancing like a chief,

Tears his brother streamlets with him

In his course. 

In the valley down below,

‘Neath his footsteps spring the flowers,

And the meadow,

In his breath finds life.

Yet no shady vale can stay him,

Nor can flowers,

Round his knees all-softly twining,

With their loving eyes detain him;

To the plain his course he taketh,

Serpent-winding,

Social streamlets,

Join his waters.  And now moves he

O’er the plain in silv’ry glory,

And the plain in him exults,

And the rivers from the plain,

And the streamlets from the mountain,

Shout with joy, exclaiming, “Brother,

Brother, take thy brethren with thee,

With thee to thine aged Father,

To the Everlasting Ocean,

Who, with Arms Outstretching far,

Waiteth for us;

Ah, in vain those Arms lie Open,

To embrace His yearning children;

For the thirsty sand consumes us,

In the desert waste; the sunbeams,

Drink our life-blood; hills around us,

Into lakes would dam us!  Brother,

Take thy brethren of the plain,

Take thy brethren of the mountain

With thee, to thy Father’s Arms!

Let all come, then!” —

And now swells he,

Lordlier still; yea, e’en a people

Bears his regal flood on high!

And in triumph onward rolling,

Names to countries gives he, - cities

Spring to light beneath his foot. 

Ever, ever, on he rushes,

Leaves the towers’ flame-tipp’d summits,

Marble palaces, the offspring

Of his fullness, far behind.

Cedar-houses bears the Atlas,

On his giant shoulders; flutt’ring,

In the breeze far, far above him,

Thousand flags are gaily floating,

Bearing witness to his might.

And so beareth he his brethren,

All his treasures, all his children,

Wildly shouting, to the bosom,

Of his long-expectant sire.”