FIRDUSI SPEAKS.

WORLD! how shameless and mischievous thou!
To nourish and rear us but only to slay.

He who is favored by Allah alone,

Can nourish and foster himself, rich and gay.

But what makes an estate? A warming sun,
Just like the beggar we enjoy that prize;
And not one child of Mammon can despise
The beggar's blessed whim that he is one.

DSCHELÂL-ED-DÎN RUMI SPEAKS.

ART tarrying in the world, a dream it flows,

Art travelling, thy range doth fate dispose:

Thou hast no power to fetter heat nor cold,
And what blooms for thee hastens to grow old.

SULEIKA SPEAKS.

HE mirror tells me I am fair;

TH

Ye tell me, even I must timeworn be.

In God all things for ever wear:

Love Him, the passing moment, then, in me.

BOOK OF ILL-HUMOR.

"BARD, when thee would Allah teach,
And lift thee to his holy mount,

He sends thee from his bitter fount
Wormwood, saying, Go thy ways,
Drink not the Malaga of praise,
But do the deed thy fellows hate,
And compromise thy peaceful state."

"Never, son of eastern morning,
Follow falsehood, follow scorning.
Denounce who will, who will deny,
And pile the hills to scale the sky;
Let theist, atheist, pantheist,

Define and wrangle how they list,"

"Heed not what the brawlers say."

EMERSON.

E

BOOK OF ILL-HUMOR.1

OW didst thou ever get it?

"HOW

Where hast thou ever met it?

How out of all life's plunder
Didst thou procure this wonder
Of pith so fleet for firing
The flicker just expiring?"

Such people, glad and peaceful,
Each one to me was easeful.

In shuddering nights belated,
By ambushed hordes awaited;
The camel's heavy panting,
The vaporing and flaunting
Of all the drivers, blended,
The ear and soul suspended.

Yet longer grew the travel
The distance to unravel,
And all our stir and seeing
Appeared a constant fleeing,
Blue, o'er the wastes in motion,
The streak-mirage of ocean.

Find me one of all the rhymers Does not think himself the best; Not a fiddler but would rather

Play his own tunes than the rest.

And of these I'm not a scorner:
Proper due to others giving

We must vote ourselves less honor.

Do we live, if those are living?