Here is a poem on a melon, by Adsched of Meru:—
“Colour, taste, and smell, smaragdus, sugar and musk,—
Amber for the tongue, for the eye a picture rare,—
If you cut the fruit in slices, every slice a crescent fair,—
If you leave it whole, the full harvest moon is there.”
Hafiz is the prince of Persian poets, and in his extraordinary gifts adds to some of the attributes of Pindar, Anacreon, Horace, and Burns the insight of a mystic, that sometimes affords a deeper glance at Nature than belongs to either of these bards. He accosts all topics with an easy audacity. “He only,” he says, “is fit for company, who knows how to prize earthly happiness at the value of a nightcap. Our father Adam sold Paradise for two kernels of wheat; then blame me not if I hold it dear at one grapestone.” He says to the Shah, “Thou who rulest after words and thoughts which no ear has heard and no mind has thought, abide firm until thy young destiny tears off his blue coat from the old graybeard of the sky.” He says:—
“I batter the wheel of heaven
When it rolls not rightly by;
I am not one of the snivellers,
Who fall thereon and die.”
The rapidity of his turns is always surprising us:—
“See how the roses burn!
Bring wine to quench the fire!
Alas! the flames come up with us,—
We perish with desire.”
After the manner of his nation, he abounds in pregnant sentences which might be engraved on a sword-blade and almost on a ring. “In honour dies he to whom the great seems ever wonderful.” “Here is the sum, that, when one door opens, another shuts.” “On every side is an ambush laid by the robber-troops of circumstance; hence it is that the horseman of life urges on his courser at headlong speed.” “The earth is a host who murders his guests.” “Good is what goes on the road of Nature. On the straight way the traveller never misses.”
“Alas! till now I had not known
My guide and Fortune’s guide are one.”
“The understanding’s copper coin
Counts not with the gold of love.”