Rumi's poems, like most other poems, are highly metaphoric ... For instance, in many of his poems he talks about getting drunk.

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,
drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power
to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.

When Rumi becomes drunk, he is filled with the understanding of God. This drunkenness is the ecstasy he feels when he comes under the realization that he has united, or is one with, the almighty God.

Lately, there has been an attempt to sell Rumi's book in wine catalogs (and others are being pawned off with erotica), but the truth is that Rumi probably had never had alcohol (as strict Muslims are not supposed to drink). However, it is a pretty moot point, as alcohol and other mind-altering substances have been used in religious circumstances from the beginning of time to give the religious-seeker a hint of the transcendent, but I'm off on a tangent...

The last stanza from this same ode concludes like this:

Why live some soberer way and feel you ebbing out?
I won't do it.
Either give me enough wine or leave me alone,
now that I know how it is
to be with you in constant conversation.

The you in this phrase is part of his prayer. Other interesting phrases are:

The children follow,
not knowing the taste of wine, or how
his drunkness feels. All people on the planet
are children, except for a very few.

He mentions this in many places, that the sober people in the streets make fun of the drunkard, since they don't know how he feels. This is also the case with being drunk with God. Others do not know what you are talking or feeling … but we, the drunks, do.

An intellectual doesn't know
what the drunk is feeling!

On a slightly different symbol...

The wine we really drink is our own blood.
Our bodies ferment in these barrels.
We give everything for a glass of this.
We give our minds for a sip.

Fermentation is an old symbol of the transformation of the human soul into the godlike soul.

There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.
Don't think all ecstasies
are the same!

Drink from the presence of saints,
and not from those other jars.

Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur,
and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a kind, and choose the purest...

Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it's been untied,
and is just ambling about.