“A glorious death is better than a life of shame.”
And many a warrior has sought death, in the hour of defeat, with these words on his lips.
Another verse which has become proverbial is:—
“That which thou dost on other’s wants bestow, is thine,
While that thou hoardest is all lost to thee.”
The ideas of love expressed by Rustaveli are partly of the Ovidian type, without any of the indelicacy of the Latin poet. But he had not studied Plato for nought, and we see in his work traces of those metaphysical theories which S. Bonaventura, Dante, and many of their contemporaries and successors found in Christianity.
In the last strophe we have a prophecy, conscious or unconscious, of the evil days that were about to dawn.
“Their deeds are ended, like a dream at night.
With them their golden age has ended too.
Far other days have dawn’d.