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and worried me with its blood-shedding paws. I could bear no more; with enraged heart I killed it too.
892. "However much I soothed it, the panther became not calm. I grew angry, I brandished it, dashed it on the ground, shattered it. I remembered how I had striven with my beloved.[1] (Yet) my soul tore not itself altogether out of me. Why, then, art thou astonished that I shed tears!
893. Behold, brother! I have told the woes that grieved me. Life itself befits me not. Why didst thou wonder that I am thus fordone? I am sundered from life, death is become shy of me." So the knight ended his story, sighed, and wept aloud.[2]
XXV
HERE IS THE GOING OF TARIEL AND AVT'HANDIL TO THE CAVE, AND THEIR SEEING OF ASMAT'H
894. Avt'handil also wept with him and shed tears. He said: "Be patient, die not, rend not altogether thy heart. God will be merciful in this, though sorrow hath not shunned thee; if He had willed to part you, He would not first have united you.
895. "Mischance pursues the lover, embitters life for him; but to him who at first bears woe it yields joy at last. Love is grievous, for it brings thee nigh unto death; it maddens the instructed, it teaches the untaught."
896. They wept and went on; they wended their way to the cave. When Asmat'h saw them she rejoiced indeed; she met them, she wept, her tears wore channels in the rocks. They kissed and wept aloud; each pressed the other to tell his news again.
897. Asmat'h said: "O God, Thou who canst not be
- ↑ See 506–512.
- ↑ Rust'haveli's contemporary, Wolfram von Eschenbach, in Parzival, vi. 80, has an episode different in character, but vaguely suggestive of the psychological aspect of this passage. Cf. Gulak, p. 53. Charlotte Brontë's Shirley is repeatedly described by her lover as "pantheress," "leopardess" (chap. xxxvi.). Cf. Rust'haveli, 26, 85.
