COUPLET. What the rose murmurs, know I not, again, To wake the hapless Bulbul's tender strain. One day the gardener, according to his established custom, came to view the roses; he saw a plaintive Nightingale who was rubbing his face on the leaves and tearing asunder, with his sharp bill, the gold-besprinkled binding of that volume. COUPLET. The nightingale that views the rose, grows blind, And straight lets go the reins that rule the mind. The gardener, beholding the scattered condition of the rose-leaves, tore, with the hand of confusion, the collar of patience, and pierced the mantle of his heart with the soul-transfixing thorn of uneasiness. The next day he found the same action repeated, and the flames of wrath, occasioned by the loss of his roses, Wounded afresh the scar he had before. The third day by the passes of the Nightingale's bill, The rose was ruined, thorns alone were left. Then the resentment caused by the Nightingale broke out in the breast of the gardener; he set a deceitful springe in his way, and having caught him with the bait of treachery, confined him in the prison of a cage. The disheartened Nightingale opened his mouth, like a parrot, and said, 'O Sir! for what cause hast thou imprisoned me? and for what reason hast thou resolved to distress me? If thou hast thus acted through desire of hearing my songs, my own nest is in thy garden, where in the morning thy bower shall be the house of my music; but if thou hast another idea, inform me, O venerable sir!1 of what thou hast in mind' The gardener said, COUPLET. How long O God! wilt thou me pang? O rival, mayest thou not abide, O God! how long conceal her cheek! cease, envious veil, her form to hide! 2 Dost thou not know how thou hast spoiled my fortune, and how often thou hast distressed me with the loss of my favourite rose? it is right that thy action should be requited, and that thou, being separated from thy friends and country, and secluded from all joy and diversions, should'st mourn in the corner of a prison; whilst I, afflicted with the anguish of separation from my darling flowers, weep in the cottage of care. COUPLET. Would'st be my friend, O Nightingale! then mourn along with me, 1 The pir may be taken with dihkan, and rendered 'the aged villager;' but it seems strange to introduce this epithet for the first time in the middle of the story. I have taken it as the vocative. Both Sir W. Jones and Keene elude the difficulty by not translating this word. 2 This difficult, and not very pleasing, couplet is omitted by Sir W. Jones. 3 This couplet is quoted from Hafiz. The Nightingale said, 'Quit this resolve, and consider that if I am imprisoned for such an offence as tearing a rose, what will be thy punishment if thou tearest a heart asunder?' VERSE. He who by wisdom guides the spheres aright, He who does good will, justly, good ensue, And evil-doers will receive their due.' This discourse, taking effect upon the heart of the gardener, he set the Nightingale at liberty. The bird tuned his voice in his free state, and said, 'Since thou hast done me this service, assuredly, according to the sentence, 'Shall the reward of good works be any other than good?' it is necessary to reward thee first. Know that under the tree where thou standest there is a vessel' full of gold; take it, and spend it to supply thy wants.' The villager searched the spot and found the words of the Nightingale to be true. He said 'O nightingale! what a wonder it is that thou couldst see the vessel [of gold] beneath the earth, and not discover the springe above ground!' The Nightingale replied, 'Dost thou not know that, when fate descends caution is vain.'' HEMISTICH. No one can war with the decrees of fate. When the mandate of the Divine will has been issued, no light remains to the eye of understanding, and neither prudence nor wisdom bring any advantage. And I have invented this story in order that thou mayest perceive that I am not an opponent of the hand of destiny and omnipotent power, and have no alternative but to bow my head reverently on the writing of the Divine decree.' COUPLET. By my Lord's threshold-His-my friend's My aims are bounded still. For all that passes o'er me comprehends But the expression of His will. 1 Ku'rán, ch. lv., 60; Sale p. 393, 1. 30: Shall the reward of good works be any other than good? Which, therefore, of your Lord's benefits will ye ungratefully deny?' 2 Sir W. Jones renders it coffer,' and Keene 'dish,' neither adhering to the literal meaning of aftábah, which is 'ewer.' Rhyme compels me to be unliteral. Keene more closely translates thus: "Thy hand has no force for anything; caution is of no avail against destiny; whatever proceeds from fate approve of that.' Damnah rejoined 'O Shanzabah! what I am positively sure of, and know of a certainty,' is this, that what the lion meditates with respect to thee is neither owing to the slanders of thy enemies, nor the success of thy merit, nor the peevishness of kings; but it is rather consummate ingratitude and treachery which impels him to it: for he is a successful tyrant, a morose and perfidious person, and a deceiver. The beginnings of intercourse with him impart the sweetness of life, but the issue of his services has the bitterness of death. We must regard him as a poisonous painted serpent: his outside adorned with various colors, but filled within with deadly venom, against which no antidote avails. COUPLET. All guile and cunning, fraud and wiles, are there; Shanzabah replied, 'I have tasted the food of the honey of favor, it is now the time for the wound of the sting of oppression; and I have passed a long interval in mirth and ease, now is the season for the assault of adversity and war. COUPLET. Yes! for a while thou hast, my heart! felt union's fleeting gladness; It was, in truth, death which grasped my collar and brought me into this wilderness, otherwise how was I fitted to associate with a lion? One who feeds upon me, and to whom I am food, he ought not to have been able to drag me to him even with a thousand cords, nor to plunge me by a hundred thousand stratagems or sleights into the snare of his friendship. COUPLET. To join my fate with him, could I then hope for this? On him from far to gaze were, sure, enough of bliss. But the Divine decree, and thy too flattering words, O Damnah! plunged me into this vortex of destruction; and now the hand of counsel falls short of the skirt of remedy, and the course of events, by reason of my having neglected caution and forethought, is not in accordance with my wishes; and I, through my vain longings and unreasonable desires, have kindled such a fire as this for myself, so that, even ere the smoke has reached me, I am consumed by the heat of my grief and the flame of my disappointment. HEMISTICH. What can I do? the act was mine-for self-done acts what cure? And the sages have said, 'Whoever is not content with a sufficiency of worldly gear, but pursues a superfluity, is like a person who arrives at a hill 1 'Ala 'l-kata, literally 'on cutting,' i.c., after the abscission of all other cases coming to this one. 2 Did the MSS. allow it, I should prefer to read bakhshad here rather than bakhshid. of diamonds, and every moment his sight falls on a larger piece, and, engaged with the thought of its greater value, he proceeds onward until he reaches the spot where he obtains the desired object, but his return becomes impracticable, because the fragments of the diamonds have cut and wounded. his feet; but that heedless person, absorbed in his covetous fancies, is insensible to his situation, and, consequently, perishing most lamentably on that hill, is lodged in the craw of birds.' COUPLET. Thy state grows worse by aiming far too high, Damnah said, 'Admirable are these words which thou hast uttered, for the source of every calamity which befalls a man will prove to be avarice and desire. COUPLET. Quit that pernicious lust of gain, for them Whom it afflicts, all, everywhere contemn. The neck that is bound by the chain of covetousness is at last severed by the sword of regret, and the head in which the madness of desire has fixed itself will in the end be rubbed in the dust of disgrace. Many a one, from excess of covetousness and greed, has been led, by the hope of wealth, into the vortex of calamity; and has been involved, by the scent of gain, in ruinous disaster: just as that Hunter greedily desired to catch the fox, and the claws of the leopard tore the breath out of his body.' Shanzabah said, 'How was that?' STORY XX. Damnah said, 'One day a Hunter, passing through a waste, saw a fox excessively brisk and active, who was roaming about in the expanse of that wilderness, and showed himself gamboling in every direction. The Hunter was pleased with his fur, and formed the idea of selling him at a great price; and the violence of his longing led him to pursue the fox until he found out his hole, and near it he dug a pit and covered it over with rubbish, and upon it he laid some carrion, and seating himself in ambush waited to catch the fox. Presently it happened that the fox came out of his hole, and the smell of that carcase drew him on gradually till it brought him to the brink of that pit. He here reflected, 'Although the brain of longing is perfumed by the aroma of this dead animal, nevertheless the smell of danger too reaches the nostril of caution; and the wise never meddle with a business which is fraught with peril, nor do the prudent commence an affair in which the possibility of mischief is discernible. COUPLET. Wherever they the perilous define, Strive thou to keep thyself without the line. And though it is possible that some dead animal may be here, it is also possible that they may have arranged beneath it a snare, and in every case caution is best. STANZA. When two affairs present themselves to thee, And of the twain thou know'st not which to do; In that step forward fearlessly and free. Pondering thus, the fox relinquished the thought of that carcase, and took the path of safety. Meanwhile a hungry leopard came down from the top of a mountain, and, from the smell of the carcase, sprang into the pit. The Hunter, when he heard the noise of the snare, and the sound of the animal's fall into the pit, thought it was the fox, and, through excessive greediness, cast himself unreflectingly upon it; and the leopard, imagining that he would prevent him from eating the dead animal, leapt up and tore open his belly. Thus the greedy huntsman, through the ill luck that attended his cupidity, was caught in the snare of destruction, and the contented fox, by retrenching his desires, escaped from the whirlpool of adversity; and the moral of this story is, that the calamitous results of greediness, and the evil of excessive concupiscence will make a slave of a free man and hurl a slave headlong [to destruction.]' COUPLET. Couldst thou a crown too large for thee obtain,1 By earth where saints have trodden!—'twere but pain. Shanzabah said, 'I did wrong to choose the service of the Lion at the first, and I was ignorant of his want of appreciation of merit: and they have said, that to associate with one who does not understand the value of your society, and the waiting on one who does not recognize the worth of your attendance, is like a man's scattering seed on salt ground in hopes of a crop, or whispering into the ear of one born deaf one's griefs and joys, or writing fresh verses on the face of a stream, or to sport with the ornamental figures in a bath in the hope of begetting offspring, or to expect drops of rain from a furious whirlwind.3 2 1 Keene must have read this passage differently, as he translates: "If thou couldst give one lock of hair beyond what belongs to thy head;' which, with reference to what follows, 'by the dust of the feet of the holy it would give a head-ache,' hardly makes sense. Kullah, however, which is found in the lithographed and printed editions, and in the MSS. I have consulted, must mean 'cap,' 'crown,' tiara.' As to the phrase, By earth, where saints have trodden;' or, as Keene renders it, 'By the dust of the feet of the holy,' Orientals consider as sacred the ground over which holy men have passed, and commonly talk of it as 'collyrium for the eyes,' etc., and as in this case swear by it. 2 Tar signifies also 'moist,' and is, therefore, introduced with reference to the db-i rawán, 'running water,' though otherwise the epithet is inapt enough, for the freshness of a verse could not make it more or less permanent on water. 3 Every one who has been in hot climates knows that these whirlwinds arise under a |