knows that a dromedary is as perfect a creature as the ravishing dancers of China and Turkestan!" . . .
If, like Saadi, thou hast mistresses only in dream, then wilt thou be spared many sorrows and disillusions.
Rose of Damascus.
I recall with sadness these verses which I composed for a young girl of Damascus. She had asked me for them one night, and I was staining for Bagdad the next morning.—
"I do not carry away the memory of the kisses thou wouldst have have given me. I shall never see thee again. When thou shalt read these verses, when their humble words shall have told thee how much I have loved the, I shall be far away, and thou wilt lament vainly—'If I had but known!' . . . Leaning forward on my horse, I shall murmur: 'It is better thus. The heart which I offered her was not worthy of her.' . . . The kisses thou didst not give me another will give me perhaps? No! . . . be not jealous without cause; for if there is more than one rose between Bagdad and Shiraz, that which I would have plucked to inhale its fragrance until my death can only be found at Damascus."
Fatuity.
A very pious sufi living at Cairo never pronounced a word. From every country the most eminent men came to visit him, as the moths are attracted by a flame.
On a certain day our sufi remembered the famous saying: Language is given to man to make himself appreciated. He judged that he could not keep silent longer without of hurting his reputation. Thereupon he began to speak, and all his friends unanimously declared that that they had never known a greater fool. Not only did they cease visiting him, but they turned his reputation to ridicule. He left Cairo after having engraved these lines on the wall of a mosque: I was wrong not to read in my intelligence as in a mirror. If I had done this I should not now be the butt of the city. I owed my renown to my silence. . . . I have spoken, my renown has vanished—I depart also.
