Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers. W. A. Clouston
he could discover no flower whose form he might admire, nor any verdure whose freshness he might enjoy. The Thorn turned round to him and said: “How long, silly bird, wouldst thou be courting the society of the Rose? Now is the season that in the absence of thy charmer thou must put up with the heart-rending bramble of separation.” The Nightingale cast his eye upon the scene around him, but saw nothing fit to eat. Destitute of food, his strength and fortitude failed him, and in his abject helplessness he was unable to earn himself a little livelihood. He called to his mind and said: “Surely the Ant had in former days his dwelling underneath this tree, and was busy in hoarding a store of provision: now I will lay my wants before her, and, in the name of good neighbourship, and with an appeal to her generosity, beg some small relief. Peradventure she may pity my distress and bestow her charity upon me.” Like a poor suppliant, the half-famished Nightingale presented himself at the Ant’s door, and said: “Generosity is the harbinger of prosperity, and the capital stock of good luck. I was wasting my precious life in idleness whilst thou wast toiling hard and laying up a hoard. How considerate and good it were of thee wouldst thou spare me a portion of it.” The Ant replied:
“Thou wast day and night occupied in idle talk, and I in attending to the needful: one moment thou wast taken up with the fresh blandishment of the Rose, and the next busy in admiring the blossoming spring. Wast thou not aware that every summer has its fall and every road an end?”15
These are a few more of Saádí’s aphorisms:
Riches are for the comfort of life, and not life for the accumulation of riches.16
The eye of the avaricious man cannot be satisfied with wealth, any more than a well can be filled with dew.
A wicked rich man is a clod of earth gilded.
The liberal man who eats and bestows is better than the religious man who fasts and hoards.
Publish not men’s secret faults, for by disgracing them you make yourself of no repute.
He who gives advice to a self-conceited man stands himself in need of counsel from another.
The vicious cannot endure the sight of the virtuous, in the same manner as the curs of the market howl at a hunting-dog, but dare not approach him.
When a mean wretch cannot vie with any man in virtue, out of his wickedness he begins to slander him. The abject, envious wretch will slander the virtuous man when absent, but when brought face to face his loquacious tongue becomes dumb.
O thou, who hast satisfied thy hunger, to thee a barley loaf is beneath notice;—that seems loveliness to me which in thy sight appears deformity.
The ringlets of fair maids are chains for the feet of reason, and snares for the bird of wisdom.
When you have anything to communicate that will distress the heart of the person whom it concerns, be silent, in order that he may hear it from some one else. O nightingale, bring thou the glad tidings of the spring, and leave bad news to the owl!
It often happens that the imprudent is honoured and the wise despised. The alchemist died of poverty and distress, while the blockhead found a treasure under a ruin.
Covetousness sews up the eyes of cunning, and brings both bird and fish into the net.
Although, in the estimation of the wise, silence is commendable, yet at a proper season speech is preferable.17
Two things indicate an obscure understanding: to be silent when we should converse, and to speak when we should be silent.
Put not yourself so much in the power of your friend that, if he should become your enemy, he may be able to injure you.
Our English poet Young has this observation in his Night Thoughts:
Thought, in the mine, may come forth gold or dross;
When coined in word, we know its real worth.
He had been thus anticipated by Saádí: “To what shall be likened the tongue in a man’s mouth? It is the key of the treasury of wisdom. When the door is shut, who can discover whether he deals in jewels or small-wares?”
The poet Thomson, in his Seasons, has these lines, which have long been hackneyed:
Loveliness
Needs not the aid of foreign ornament,
But is when unadorned adorned the most.
Saádí had anticipated him also: “The face of the beloved,” he says, “requireth not the art of the tire-woman. The finger of a beautiful woman and the tip of her ear are handsome without an ear-jewel or a turquoise ring.” But Saádí, in his turn, was forestalled by the Arabian poet-hero Antar, in his famous Mu’allaka, or prize-poem, which is at least thirteen hundred years old, where he says: “Many a consort of a fair one, whose beauty required no ornaments, have I laid prostrate on the field.”
Yet one Persian poet, at least, namely, Nakhshabí, held a different opinion: “Beauty,” he says, “adorned with ornaments, portends disastrous events to our hearts. An amiable form, ornamented with diamonds and gold, is like a melodious voice accompanied by the rabáb.” Again, he says: “Ornaments are the universal ravishers of hearts, and an upper garment for the shoulder is like a cluster of gems. If dress, however,” he concedes, “may have been at any time the assistant of beauty, beauty is always the animator of dress.” It is remarkable that homely-featured women dress more gaudily than their handsome sisters generally, thus unconsciously bringing their lack of beauty (not to put too fine a point on it) into greater prominence.
In common with other moralists, Saádí reiterates the maxim that learning and virtue, precept and practice, should ever go hand in hand. “Two persons,” says he, “took trouble in vain: he who acquired wealth without using it, and he who taught wisdom without practising it.” Again: “He who has acquired knowledge and does not practise it, is like unto him that ploughed but did not sow.” And again: “How much soever you may study science, when you do not act wisely, you are ignorant. The beast that they load with books is not profoundly wise and learned: what knoweth his empty skull whether he carrieth fire-wood or books?” And yet again: “A learned man without temperance is like a blind man carrying a lamp: he showeth the way to others, but does not guide himself.”
Ingratitude is denounced by all moralists as the lowest of vices. Thus Saádí says: “Man is beyond dispute the most excellent of created beings, and the vilest animal is the dog; but the sages agree that a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man. A dog never forgets a morsel, though you pelt him a hundred times with stones. But if you cherish a mean wretch for an age, he will fight with you for a mere trifle.” In language still more forcible does a Hindú poet denounce this basest of vices: “To cut off the teats of a cow;18 to occasion a pregnant woman to miscarry; to injure a Bráhman—are sins of the most aggravated nature; but more atrocious than these is ingratitude.”
The sentiment so tersely expressed in the Chinese proverb, “He who never reveals a secret keeps it best,” is thus finely amplified by Saádí: “The matter which you wish to preserve as a secret impart not to every one, although he may be worthy of confidence; for no one will be so true to your secret as yourself. It is safer to be silent than to reveal a secret to any one, and tell him not to mention it. O wise man! stop the water at the spring-head, for when it is in full stream you cannot arrest it.”19
The imperative duty of active benevolence is thus inculcated: “Bestow thy gold and thy wealth while they are thine; for when thou art gone they will be no longer in thy power. Distribute thy treasure readily to-day, for to-morrow the key may be no longer in thy hand. Exert thyself to cast a covering over the poor, that God’s own veil may be a covering to thee.”
In the following passage the man of learning and virtue is contrasted with the stupid and ignorant blockhead:
“If a wise man, falling into company with mean people, does not get credit for his discourse, be not surprised, for the sound of the harp cannot overpower the noise of the drum,