His smiling children."
And Firdausi makes Kitabun say:
"A mother's counsel is a golden treasure."
Examples of the recognition of love that is deep and full of meaning are not wanting among the Persian poets.
Nizami, Persia's first great romantic poet, who lived in the twelfth century of our era, wrote nothing better than his romance of Bedouin love, the story of Laili and Majnun, which has been happily termed the Romeo and Juliet of the East. "France," says a recent writer, "has its Abelard and Eloise, Italy its Petrarch and Laura, Persia and Arabia have their pure pathetic romance." Many see in the story of Laili and Majnun an allegorical or spiritual interpretation. At least, it illustrates the stress which the Persian poets put upon a true, undying devotion, and the Orientals consider it the very personification of faithful love.
The higher ideals are often found in the dramatic literature. Many consider Jami's celebrated Yusuf and Zulaikha, a dramatic poem modelled after Firdausi, to be the finest poem in the Persian language. Sir William Jones pronounces it "the finest poem he ever read." It gives account of Yusuf--the Israelite Joseph--and Zulaikha, Potiphar's wife. In this is disclosed how the human soul attains the love for the highest beauty and goodness only when it has suffered and has been thoroughly regenerated, purified, as was the life of Zulaikha. The poet, seeing the emptiness of mere beauty, reaches the inevitable conclusion that
"He who gives his heart to a lovely form
May look for no rest--but a life of storm
If the gold of union be still his quest,
With fond vain dream, love deludes his breast."