His honied phrases smacked to them of knavish plan.
Refined truisms, double-meaning, he’d deal out,
Like syrup into which some mortal poison’s put.
Be thou not caught with knavery’s fairly-spoken word;
A hidden meaning it may have. Be on thy guard.
Of evil-minded men the speech is never good;
Their hearts are dead and putrid; life cannot there brood.130
A man’s an offset from a man, by nature’s law,
As sure as cake of bread is bread, and not mere straw.
God’s Lion,[99] ‘Ali, saith: “All words in folly made,