NISAMI.

  “While roses bloomed along the plain,
  The nightingale to the falcon said,
  ’Why, of all birds, must thou be dumb? 
  With closed mouth thou utterest,
  Though dying, no last word to man. 
  Yet sitt’st thou on the hand of princes,
  And feedest on the grouse’s breast,
  Whilst I, who hundred thousand jewels
  Squander in a single tone,
  Lo!  I feed myself with worms,
  And my dwelling is the thorn.’—­
  The falcon answered, ’Be all ear: 
  I, experienced in affairs,
  See fifty things, say never one;
  But thee the people prizes not,
  Who, doing nothing, say’st a thousand. 
  To me, appointed to the chase,
  The king’s hand gives the grouse’s breast;
  Whilst a chatterer like thee
  Must gnaw worms in the thorn.  Farewell!’”

The following passages exhibit the strong tendency of the Persian poets to contemplative and religious poetry and to allegory.

ENWERI.

BODY AND SOUL.

  “A painter in China once painted a hall;—­
  Such a web never hung on an emperor’s wall;—­
  One half from his brush with rich colors did run,
  The other he touched with a beam of the sun;
  So that all which delighted the eye in one side,
  The same, point for point, in the other replied.

  “In thee, friend, that Tyrian chamber is found;
  Thine the star-pointing roof, and the base on the ground: 
  Is one half depicted with colors less bright? 
  Beware that the counterpart blazes with light!”

IBN JEMIN.

  “I read on the porch of a palace bold
    In a purple tablet letters cast,—­
  ’A house, though a million winters old,
    A house of earth comes down at last;
  Then quarry thy stones from the crystal All,
  And build the dome that shall not fall.’”

“What need,” cries the mystic Feisi, “of palaces and tapestry?  What need even of a bed?

  “The eternal Watcher, who doth wake
    All night in the body’s earthen chest,
  Will of thine arms a pillow make,
    And a holster of thy breast.”

A stanza of Hilali on a Flute is a luxury of idealism:—­

  “Hear what, now loud, now low, the pining flute complains,
    Without tongue, yellow-cheeked, full of winds that wail and sigh,
  Saying, ’Sweetheart, the old mystery remains,
    If I am I, thou thou, or thou art I.’”

Ferideddin Attar wrote the “Bird Conversations,” a mystical tale, in which the birds, coming together to choose their king, resolve on a pilgrimage to Mount Kaf, to pay their homage to the Simorg.  From this poem, written five hundred years ago, we cite the following passage, as a proof of the identity of mysticism in all periods.  The tone is quite modern.  In the fable, the birds were soon weary of the length and difficulties of the way, and at last almost all gave out.  Three only persevered, and arrived before the throne of the Simorg.