Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers Part 3

O thou, who hast satisfied thy hunger, to thee a barley loaf is beneath notice;--that seems loveliness to me which in thy sight appears deformity.

The ringlets of fair maids are chains for the feet of reason, and snares for the bird of wisdom.

When you have anything to communicate that will distress the heart of the person whom it concerns, be silent, in order that he may hear it from some one else. O nightingale, bring thou the glad tidings of the spring, and leave bad news to the owl!

It often happens that the imprudent is honoured and the wise despised.

The alchemist died of poverty and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin.

Covetousness sews up the eyes of cunning, and brings both bird and fish into the net.

Although, in the estimation of the wise, silence is commendable, yet at a proper season speech is preferable.[17]

[17] "Comprehensive talkers are apt to be tiresome when we are not athirst for information; but, to be quite fair, we must admit that superior reticence is a good deal due to the lack of matter. Speech is often barren, but silence does not necessarily brood over a full nest.

Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled nest-egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion."--George Eliot's _Felix Holt_.

Two things indicate an obscure understanding: to be silent when we should converse, and to speak when we should be silent.

Put not yourself so much in the power of your friend that, if he should become your enemy, he may be able to injure you.

Our English poet Young has this observation in his _Night Thoughts_:

Thought, in the mine, may come forth gold or dross; When coined in word, we know its real worth.

He had been thus antic.i.p.ated by Saadi: "To what shall be likened the tongue in a man's mouth? It is the key of the treasury of wisdom. When the door is shut, who can discover whether he deals in jewels or small-wares?"

The poet Thomson, in his _Seasons_, has these lines, which have long been hackneyed:

Loveliness Needs not the aid of foreign ornament, But is when unadorned adorned the most.

Saadi had antic.i.p.ated him also: "The face of the beloved," he says, "requireth not the art of the tire-woman. The finger of a beautiful woman and the tip of her ear are handsome without an ear-jewel or a turquoise ring." But Saadi, in his turn, was forestalled by the Arabian poet-hero Antar, in his famous _Mu'allaka_, or prize-poem, which is at least thirteen hundred years old, where he says: "Many a consort of a fair one, whose beauty required no ornaments, have I laid prostrate on the field."

Yet one Persian poet, at least, namely, Nakhshabi, held a different opinion: "Beauty," he says, "adorned with ornaments, portends disastrous events to our hearts. An amiable form, ornamented with diamonds and gold, is like a melodious voice accompanied by the rabab." Again, he says: "Ornaments are the universal ravishers of hearts, and an upper garment for the shoulder is like a cl.u.s.ter of gems. If dress, however,"

he concedes, "may have been at any time the a.s.sistant of beauty, beauty is always the animator of dress." It is remarkable that homely-featured women dress more gaudily than their handsome sisters generally, thus unconsciously bringing their lack of beauty (not to put too fine a point on it) into greater prominence.

In common with other moralists, Saadi reiterates the maxim that learning and virtue, precept and practice, should ever go hand in hand. "Two persons," says he, "took trouble in vain: he who acquired wealth without using it, and he who taught wisdom without practising it." Again: "He who has acquired knowledge and does not practise it, is like unto him that ploughed but did not sow." And again: "How much soever you may study science, when you do not act wisely, you are ignorant. The beast that they load with books is not profoundly wise and learned: what knoweth his empty skull whether he carrieth fire-wood or books?" And yet again: "A learned man without temperance is like a blind man carrying a lamp: he showeth the way to others, but does not guide himself."

Ingrat.i.tude is denounced by all moralists as the lowest of vices. Thus Saadi says: "Man is beyond dispute the most excellent of created beings, and the vilest animal is the dog; but the sages agree that a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man. A dog never forgets a morsel, though you pelt him a hundred times with stones. But if you cherish a mean wretch for an age, he will fight with you for a mere trifle." In language still more forcible does a Hindu poet denounce this basest of vices: "To cut off the teats of a cow;[18] to occasion a pregnant woman to miscarry; to injure a Brahman--are sins of the most aggravated nature; but more atrocious than these is ingrat.i.tude."

[18] The cow is sacred among the Hindus.

The sentiment so tersely expressed in the Chinese proverb, "He who never reveals a secret keeps it best," is thus finely amplified by Saadi: "The matter which you wish to preserve as a secret impart not to every one, although he may be worthy of confidence; for no one will be so true to your secret as yourself. It is safer to be silent than to reveal a secret to any one, and tell him not to mention it. O wise man! stop the water at the spring-head, for when it is in full stream you cannot arrest it."[19]

[19] Thus also Jami, in his _Baharistan_ (Second "Garden"): "With regard to a secret divulged and one kept concealed, there is in use an excellent proverb, that the one is an arrow still in our possession, and the other is an arrow sent from the bow." And another Persian poet, whose name I have not ascertained, eloquently exclaims: "O my heart! if thou desirest ease in this life, keep thy secrets undisclosed, like the modest rose-bud. Take warning from that lovely flower, which, by expanding its. .h.i.therto hidden beauties when in full bloom, gives its leaves and its happiness to the winds."

The imperative duty of active benevolence is thus inculcated: "Bestow thy gold and thy wealth while they are thine; for when thou art gone they will be no longer in thy power. Distribute thy treasure readily to-day, for to-morrow the key may be no longer in thy hand. Exert thyself to cast a covering over the poor, that G.o.d's own veil may be a covering to thee."

In the following pa.s.sage the man of learning and virtue is contrasted with the stupid and ignorant blockhead:

"If a wise man, falling into company with mean people, does not get credit for his discourse, be not surprised, for the sound of the harp cannot overpower the noise of the drum, and the fragrance of ambergris is overcome by fetid garlic. The ignorant fellow was proud of his loud voice, because he had impudently confounded the man of understanding. If a jewel falls in the mud it is still the same precious stone,[20] and if dust flies up to the sky it retains its original baseness. A capacity without education is deplorable, and education without capacity is thrown away. Sugar obtains not its value from the cane, but from its innate quality. Musk has fragrance of itself, and not from being called a perfume by the druggist. The wise man is like the druggist's chest, silent, but full of virtues; while the blockhead resembles the warrior's drum, noisy, but an empty prattler. A wise man in the company of those who are ignorant has been compared by the sages to a beautiful girl in the company of blind men, and to the Kuran in the house of an infidel."--The old proverb that "an evil bird has an evil egg" finds expression by Saadi thus: "No one whose origin is bad ever catches the reflection of the good." Again, he says: "How can we make a good sword out of bad iron? A worthless person cannot by education become a person of any worth." And yet again: "Evil habits which have taken root in one's nature will only be got rid of at the hour of death."

[20] Is such a thing as an emerald made worse than it was if it is not praised?--_Marcus Aurelius_.

If gla.s.s be used to decorate a crown, While gems are taken to bedeck a foot, 'Tis not that any fault lies in the gem, But in the want of knowledge of the setter.

--_Panchatantra_, a famous Indian book of Fables.

Firdausi, the Homer of Persia (eleventh century), has the following remarks in his scathing satire on the sultan Mahmud, of Ghazni (Atkinson's rendering):

Alas! from vice can goodness ever spring?

Is mercy hoped for in a tyrant king?

Can water wash the Ethiopian white?

Can we remove the darkness from the night?

The tree to which a bitter fruit is given Would still be bitter in the bowers of heaven; And a bad heart keeps on its vicious course, Or, if it changes, changes for the worse; Whilst streams of milk where Eden's flow'rets blow Acquire more honied sweetness as they flow.

The striking words of the Great Teacher, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of G.o.d!" find an interesting a.n.a.logue in this pa.s.sage by Saadi: "There is a saying of the Prophet, 'To the poor death is a state of rest.' The a.s.s that carries the lightest burden travels easiest. In like manner, the good man who bears the burden of poverty will enter the gate of death lightly loaded, while he who lives in affluence, with ease and comfort, will, doubtless, on that very account find death very terrible. And in any view, the captive who is released from confinement is happier than the n.o.ble who is taken prisoner."

A singular anecdote is told of another celebrated Persian poet, which may serve as a kind of commentary on this last-cited pa.s.sage: Faridu 'd-Din 'Attar, who died in the year 1229, when over a hundred years old, was considered the most perfect Sufi[21] philosopher of the time in which he lived. His father was an eminent druggist in Nishapur, and for a time Faridu 'd-Din followed the same profession, and his shop was the delight of all who pa.s.sed by it, from the neatness of its arrangements and the fragrant odours of drugs and essences. 'Attar, which means druggist, or perfumer, Faridu 'd-Din adopted for his poetical t.i.tle. One day, while sitting at his door with a friend, an aged dervish drew near, and, after looking anxiously and closely into the well-furnished shop, he sighed heavily and shed tears, as he reflected on the transitory nature of all earthly things. 'Attar, mistaking the sentiment uppermost in the mind of the venerable devotee, ordered him to be gone, to which he meekly rejoined: "Yes, I have nothing to prevent me from leaving thy door, or, indeed, from quitting this world at once, as my sole possession is this threadbare garment. But O 'Attar, I grieve for thee: for how canst thou ever bring thyself to think of death--to leave all these goods behind thee?" 'Attar replied that he hoped and believed that he should die as contentedly as any dervish; upon which the aged devotee, saying, "We shall see," placed his wooden bowl upon the ground, laid his head upon it, and, calling on the name of G.o.d, immediately resigned his soul. Deeply impressed with this incident, 'Attar at once gave up his shop, and devoted himself to the study of Sufi philosophy.[22]

[21] The Sufis are the mystics of Islam, and their poetry, while often externally anacreontic--baccha.n.a.lian and erotic--possesses an esoteric, spiritual signification: the sensual world is employed to symbolise that which is to be apprehended only by the _inward_ sense. Most of the great poets of Persia, Afghanistan, and Turkey are generally understood to have been Sufis.

[22] Sir Gore Ouseley's _Biographical Notices of Persian Poets_.

The death of Cardinal Mazarin furnishes another remarkable ill.u.s.tration of Saadi's sentiment. A day or two before he died, the cardinal caused his servant to carry him into his magnificent art gallery, where, gazing upon his collection of pictures and sculpture, he cried in anguish, "And must I leave all these?" Dr. Johnson may have had Mazarin's words in mind when he said to Garrick, while being shown over the famous actor's splendid mansion: "Ah, Davie, Davie, these are the things that make a death-bed terrible!"

Few pa.s.sages of Shakspeare are more admired than these lines:

And this our life, exempt from public haunts, Finds _tongues in trees_, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.[23]

[23] Cf. these lines, from Herrick's "Hesperides":

But you are _lovely leaves_, where we May read, how soon things have Their end, tho' ne'er so brave; And after they have shown their pride, Like you, a while, they glide Into the grave.

Saadi had thus expressed the same sentiment before him: "The foliage of a newly-clothed tree, to the eye of a discerning man, displays a whole volume of the wondrous works of the Creator." Another Persian poet, Jami, in his beautiful mystical poem of _Yusuf wa Zulaykha_, says: "Every leaf is a tongue uttering praises, like one who keepeth crying, 'In the name of G.o.d.'"[24] And the Afghan poet Abdu 'r-Rahman says: "Every tree, every shrub, stands ready to bend before him; every herb and blade of gra.s.s is a tongue to mutter his praises." And Horace Smith, that most pleasing but unpretentious writer, both of verse and prose, has thus finely amplified the idea of "tongues in trees":

Your voiceless lips, O Flowers, are living preachers, Each cup a pulpit, every leaf a book, Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers, From loneliest nook.

'Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth, And tolls its perfume on the pa.s.sing air, Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth A call to prayer;--

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column Attest the feebleness of mortal hand, But to that fane, most catholic and solemn, Which G.o.d hath planned:

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder, Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply; Its choir, the winds and waves, its organ, thunder, Its dome, the sky.

There, amid solitude and shade, I wander Through the green aisles, and, stretched upon the sod, Awed by the silence, reverently ponder The ways of G.o.d.

[24] "In the name of G.o.d" is part of the formula employed by pious Muslims in their acts of wors.h.i.+p, and on entering upon any enterprise of danger or uncertainty--_bi'smi'llahi ar-rahman ar-rahimi_, "In the name of G.o.d, the Merciful, the Compa.s.sionate!" These words are usually placed at the beginning of Muhammedan books, secular as well as religions; and they form part of the Muslim Confession of Faith, used in the last extremity: "In the name of G.o.d, the Merciful, the Compa.s.sionate! There is no strength nor any power save in G.o.d, the High, the Mighty. To G.o.d we belong, and verily to him we return!"