XCV
And much as Wine has play’d the Infidel,
And robb’d me of my Robe of Honour—Well,
I wonder often what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the stuff they sell.
Firdausi, the greatest Epic poet of Persia, gives us this witty epigram.
ON SULTAN MAHMOUD
’Tis said our monarch’s liberal mind
Is like the ocean, unconfined.
Happy are they who prove it so;