“Thou didst not consider that Moses was a prophet, nor art thou ashamed of assaulting David; thou takest even Father Abraham; thou draggest King Tiridates from his throne; and thou respectest not the Emperor Constantine.[24]
“If a hero is attended by 1000 horsemen and arrayed in six coats of armour, thou shootest thine arrows at him and bringest him down, then thou castest him into prison and before the entrance thou placest a great stone.”
The poem continues:—
“Like an eagle flying far,
Forth on wide-spread wings thou farest;
All the strong ones of the earth
In thy wing-tips rolled thou bearest.”
In other poems we see his susceptibility to passion and his sense of love’s power. In one of these poems he depicts[25] a bishop of 100 years old whose beard had turned from white to yellow and who, when officiating at the altar, suddenly uttered the name of a lady in his invocation before the cross.
Mkrtich Naghash was Archbishop of Diarbekr. He lived when the country was in difficult political circumstances. His talents were appreciated not only by Armenians, but also by the Mohammedan rulers with whom, thanks to his tact, he established friendly relations, whereby he was able to protect his compatriots from many oppressions. He built a church, which he adorned with beautiful pictures of his own painting. But, after the death of the Mohammedan princes who were his patrons, tyranny and oppression began again under their successors. He went to Byzantium to solicit aid for his suffering countrymen, but returned disappointed.
Besides his artistic skill, he was a poet of considerable merit. His poems are generally on moral and religious themes—the vanity of the world, avarice, and so forth; he also wrote songs of exile, and love songs.