Thus we may expect to find that they will contain often bold imagery, striking comparisons; and such they do. Let serve as an example our own: _Gray hairs are death’s blossoms_;[90] or the Italian: _Time is an inaudible file_;[91] or the Greek: _Man a bubble_;[92] which Jeremy Taylor has expanded into such glorious poetry in the opening of the _Holy Dying_; or that Turkish: _Death is a black camel which kneels at every man’s gate_; to take up, that is, the burden of a coffin there; or this Arabic one, on the never satisfied eye of desire: _Nothing but a handful of dust will fill the eye of man_; or another from the same quarter, worthy of Mecca’s prophet himself, and of the earnestness with which he realized Gehenna, whatever else he may have come short in: _There are no fans in hell_; or this other, also from the East: _Hold all skirts of thy mantle extended, when heaven is raining gold_; improve, that is, to the uttermost the happier crises of thy spiritual life; or this Indian, to the effect that good should be returned for evil: _The sandal tree perfumes the axe that fells it_; or this one, current in the Middle Ages: _Whose life lightens, his words thunder_;[93] or once more, this Chinese: _Towers are measured by their shadows, and great men by their calumniators_; however this last may have somewhat of an artificial air as tried by our standard of the proverb. There may be poetry in a play upon words; and such we shall hardly fail to acknowledge in that beautiful Spanish proverb: _La verdad es siempre verde_, which I must leave in its original form; for were I to translate it, _The truth is always green_, its charm and chief beauty would be looked for in vain. It finds its pendant and complement in another, which I must also despair of adequately rendering: _Gloria vana florece, y no grana_; which would express this truth, namely, that vain glory can shoot up into stalk and ear, but can never attain to the full grain in the ear. Nor can we, I think, refuse the title of poetry to this Eastern proverb, in which the wish that a woman may triumph over her enemies, clothes itself thus: _May her enemies stumble over her hair_;—may she flourish so, may her hair, the outward sign of this prosperity, grow so rich and long, may it so sweep the ground, that her detractors and persecutors may be entangled by it and fall. * * * * * [Sidenote: Witty proverbs.]