Rumi's Beautiful Poem on Evolution

The following poem is from the Islamic mystic Rumi.  I am lifting it from a work titled The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, by Muhammad Iqbal.  Iqbal prefaces the poem by saying, "It is strange how the same idea affects different cultures differently.  The formulation of the theory of evolution in the world of Islam brought into being Rumi's tremendous enthusiasm for the biological future of man.  No cultured Muslim can read such passages as the following without a thrill of joy."  Here's the poem:

Low in the earth
I lived in realms of ore and stone;
And then I smiled in many flowers;
Them roving with the wild and wandering hours,
O'er earth and air and ocean's zone,
In a new birth,
I dived and flew,
And crept and ran,
And all the secret of my essence drew
Within a form that brought them all to view-
And lo, a Man!
And then my goal.
Beyond the clouds, beyond the sky,
In realms where none may change or die-
In angel form; and then away
Beyond the bounds of night and day,
And Life and Death, unseen or seen,
Where all that is hath ever been,
As One and Whole.

(Rumi: Thadani's Translation.) 

 A thrill of joy, indeed.  I wish the Christian world could catch some of Rumi's enthusiasm!