With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow
And with my own hand labour’d it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d—
“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”
Similar examples may be found elsewhere, thus:—
From the Beginning was written what shall be
Unhaltingly the Pen writes, and is heedless of good and bad;
On the First Day He appointed everything that must be,
Our grief and our efforts are vain,
develops into:—
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
The general tendency to amplification is shown again in the translation of the two lines:—
Forsake not the book, the lover’s lips and the green bank of the field,
Ere that the earth enfold thee in its bosom.
into the oft-quoted verses:—
With me along some Strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where the name of Slave and Sultán scarce is known,
And pity Sultán Máhmúd on his Throne.