"Ho! a cup, and fill it up, and tell me it is wine, For I will never drink in shade if I can drink in shine! Curst and poor is every hour that sober I must go, But rich am I whene'er well drunk I stagger to and fro. Speak, for shame, the loved one's name, let vain disguise alone: No good there is in pleasures o'er which a veil is thrown."[532] Abú Nuwás practised what he preached, and hypocrisy at any rate cannot be laid to his charge. The moral and religious sentiments which appear in some of his poems are not mere cant, but should rather be regarded as the utterance of sincere though transient emotion. Usually he felt and avowed that pleasure was the supreme business of his life, and that religious scruples could not be permitted to stand in the way. He even urges others not to shrink from any excess, inasmuch as the Divine mercy is greater than all the sins of which a man is capable:-- "Accumulate as many sins thou canst: The Lord is ready to relax His ire. When the day comes, forgiveness thou wilt find Before a mighty King and gracious Sire, And gnaw thy fingers, all that joy regretting Which thou didst leave thro' terror of Hell-fire!"[533] We must now bid farewell to Abú Nuwás and the licentious poets (_al-shu‘ará al-mujján_) who reflect so admirably the ideas and manners prevailing in court circles and in the upper classes of society which were chiefly influenced by the court. The scenes of luxurious dissipation and refined debauchery which they describe show us, indeed, that Persian culture was not an unalloyed blessing to the Arabs any more than were the arts of Greece to the Romans; but this is only the darker side of the picture. The works of a contemporary poet furnish evidence of the indignation which the libertinism fashionable in high places called forth among the mass of Moslems who had not lost faith in morality and religion. [Sidenote: Abu ’l-‘Atáhiya (748-828 A.D.).]