Save that Bāhram,[[229]] the blood drinker
Each day stood watchful by.”
This fearful bird was on the wing searching for food, and seeing the falcon and the pigeon, he said to himself, “Although this pigeon is only a mouthful, nevertheless one may break one’s fast upon it,” and quickly he dashed at the falcon:
“The feathered rivals then to fight began,
The quarry, dodging, from between them ran.”
While the fight went fiercely on, Bāzindah threw himself under a stone, and crowded himself into a hole hardly large enough for a sparrow, and here he passed the day and another night, quivering with terror and distress. But the morning light again illumined the mountain peaks, for the white-pinioned dove of the dawn began to fly from the nest of heaven, and the black raven of night went to his rest like the Sīmūrgh, behind the shades of the distant mountains. Bāzindah began to flutter his weary wings, and look hungrily around him, when he gladly spied another pigeon, with a little grain scattered before him. Rejoicing to see one of his own species, he fluttered eagerly to the grain, but alas! his foot was caught in a snare.
“Satan’s the net, the world’s the grain,
Our lusts the enticements are,
Our hearts, the fowl which greediness
Soon lures within the snare.”