And so onward, through many a page.
This picture of the first days of Spring, from Enweri, seems to belong to Hafiz:—
“O’er the garden water goes the wind alone
To rasp and to polish the cheek of the wave;
The fire is quenched on the dear hearthstone,
But it burns again on the tulips brave.”
Friendship is a favourite topic of the Eastern poets, and they have matched on this head the absoluteness of Montaigne.
Hafiz says, “Thou learnest no secret until thou knoweth friendship; since to the unsound no heavenly knowledge enters.”
Ibn Jemin writes thus:
“Whilst I disdain the populace,
I find no peer in higher place,
Friend is a word of royal tone,
Friend is a poem all alone.
“Wisdom is like the elephant,
Lofty and rare inhabitant:
He dwells in deserts or in courts;
With hucksters he has no resorts.”
Dschami says,—