This prose anecdote from Jami's Baharestan uses the image of an ant girded with strength, carrying a locust ten times its own size, to teach that true power derives from lofty spiritual aspiration (himmat) and zealous resolve, not from the strength of the body or the bulk of the frame. When onlookers marvel at how so feeble a creature bears so heavy a load, the ant replies that men carry their burdens by the force of aspiration (himmat) and the arm of zeal (hamiyyat), not by physical might. The closing quatrain generalizes the lesson: the burden that the heavens and the earth refused to bear cannot be shouldered by mere body and soul; one must fortify one's aspiration with the aid of the travelers on the path of love, for only the strength of himmat can carry such a load. These verses evoke the Quranic motif of the trust (amanah) that the heavens, earth, and mountains declined to bear and that humankind accepted, reframing spiritual capacity as a matter of inner resolve rather than ...