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Title: Epigrams From The Persian
Author: George Borrow [
More Titles by Borrow]
1.
Hear what once the pigmy clever
To the stupid giant said:
Things are not of highest value
Which do highest rear their head;
The sluggish horse is nothing better
Than the donkey lowest bred.
2.
The man who of his words is sparing
His strength and weakness hidden keeps;
Think not every thicket empty,
Perchance in one a tiger sleeps.
3.
If thou would’st ruin ’scape, and blackest woe,
Unto these words, these precious words attend:
Never be heedless of a mortal foe,
Nor choose a proud and envious man for friend.
4.
Sit down with your friends in delightful repose
When war and contention you see ’midst your foes;
But when to an end their contentions they bring,
Then, then seize the bow, and get ready the sling.
5.
The hungry hound upon the bone will pounce
He prowling finds, and not mistrustful pass;
He asks not whom it did belong to once,
The prophet’s camel or the sinner’s ass.
6.
Great Aaroun is dead, and is nothing, the man
Who left forty castles replete with gold store;
But living though dead is the great Nourshwan,
In the good name he left he has death triumphed o’er.
7.
Though God provides our daily bread,
Yet all must seek that bread I ween;
Though all must die, there is no need
To rush the dragon’s jaws between.
8.
THE KING AND HIS FOLLOWERS.
If in the boor’s garden the King eats a pear,
His servants rapacious the tree will uptear;
For every five eggs he gives bounteously, more
Than five hundred fowls will his armies devour.
9.
THE DEVOUT MAN AND THE TYRANT.
If the half of a loaf the devout man receives,
The half of that half to the wretched he gives;
But no sooner a tyrant one kingdom has ta’en,
Than the wish of his heart is another to gain.
10.
THE CAT AND THE BEGGAR.
If a cat could the power of flying enjoy,
She all the world’s sparrows would quickly destroy;
If power in the hands of a beggar you place,
No mercy he’ll show to the beggarly race.
11.
THE KING AND TAYLOR.
The taylor who travels in far foreign lands,
Can always get bread by the work of his hands;
But the King who from throne and from country has fled,
Must oft without supper go sighing to bed.
12.
GOLD COIN AND STAMPED LEATHER.
Of the children of wisdom how like is the face
To pure gold that’s accepted in every place;
But the ignorant great are much like leather cash,
At home which though current, abroad is but trash.
13.
So much like a friend with your foe ever deal,
That you never need dread the least scratch from his steel;
But ne’er with your friend deal so much like a foe,
That you ever must dread from his faulchion a blow.
[The end]
George Borrow's poem: Epigrams From The Persian
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