FIRDAUSI (935-1020)

 

 

 

 

My manhood's thirty years I spent

In hunger toil and strife

And by this Persian tongue itself

Brought Persia Back to life

 

Firdausi (in his satire on Sultan Mahmud)

 

 

            A tree whose quality is bitterness,

            If it should be uptaken by the root

            And planted in the soil of Paradise,

            Even there it would produce a bitter fruit.

 

 

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Firdausi tells the Honourable Members to desist

From perorations----greatness doesn't in mere words exist;

No country yet by talk alone from tyranny was freed,

And twice two hundred words are not    worth half one valiant deed.

 

 

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            The black mass of an army,

            Which fronts a soldier's eye,

            Should never his brave soul appal

            Nor make him dread to die;

            He should with stouter heart advance,

            Recalling, there and then,

            That one real warrior is worth

            A hundred thousand men.

 

 

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            Age and youth go down together

            In April and December weather,

            For soon or late comes Death;

            And though we hand in hand may stray

            Across the golden meads to-day

            Our fate on earth we know:

            The blossom which adorns the hedge,

            And dry reeds at the river's edge,

            Alike await the blow,

            The cold uncompensating steel

            Which we shall wake at last to feel---

            And know that it is Death.

 

 

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            Though Death may take me in his cruel clutch

            My verse will give men joy---

            It is a monument Time cannot touch

            Nor wind nor rain destroy.