29. “A serpent drinking milk only increases his venom, thus a fool being admonished is provoked, but not benefitted. A sensible man may be admonished, but not a fool.”
30. “He who knows not his own weakness must be routed by flatterers and enemies.”
31. “A great man becomes little, and his virtue is diminished by associating with an unprincipled person.”
CHAPTER X.
PERSIAN POETRY.
SEVEN ERAS—THE FIRST PERIOD—THE HOMER OF ĪRĀN—THE SHĀH NĀMAH—HISTORY OF THE PERSIAN EPIC—FIRDUSĪ—INVECTIVE—MŪTESHIM—THE SHĀH’S REPENTANCE—DEATH OF FIRDUSĪ—THE POEM.
The history of Persian poetry may be divided into seven distinct periods of from one to two centuries each.
The first period reaches from the beginning of the tenth century to the close of the eleventh, and it may be said to represent the national poetry in its original purity. Previous to this time, there had been fragments of verse, which had been composed by Bāhram Gor, a Sassanian king, and a few other authors, but this early literature had perished at the hands of the Moslem invaders. The conquerors not only destroyed, as far as possible, the literature of Īrān, but even discarded the language, using Arabic in all official documents. The vitality of the Persian tongue, however, was so great that the patriotic people finally founded another national literature, under the patronage of the Samanian kings.
To this period belonged, Rūdāki, who has been called “The father of Persian poetry,” and who was said to be the author of one hundred volumes of verse, besides his metrical version of the work which has been discussed in the previous chapter under the Persian name of Anwār-i-Suhali. To this period also belonged Omar Khayyām, who was a mathematician as well as a poet. His beautiful quatrains are a great improvement upon the rubā’ī of Abu Sa’īd, who was his predecessor in this peculiar style of verse, and his rhapsodies upon love and wine resemble those of Hāfiz.
The position of “King of Poets,” which was established by Mahmūd the Ghaznevide, is still maintained at the court of Persia, as well as in England, where Tennyson so long filled the office of Poet Laureate. Firdusī was the great literary light of the first period of Persian poetry, indeed he was the Homer of Īrān, and his great epic will always command the first position among the poetical productions of his native land.