"Sâdee," said Khan Sâhib, "has, as you state, a great reputation in Persia, but it is rather as a wise man and a moralist, than a poet. He seeks by fiction to adorn, not encumber truth; and the admiration of his reader is invariably given to the sentiment more than to the language in which it is clothed. "As a proof," continued my friend, "that this is just, let us take two stanzas. In the first of these Sâdee thus describes himself: 'The snows of age rest upon my head, Yet my disposition still makes me young.'[108] In these lines, marked as they are by simplicity and beauty, the thought, not the expression, is what we most admire. In the second, when addressing sovereigns, he says, 'Be merciful, and learn to conquer without an army Seize upon the hearts of mankind, and be acknowledged the world's conqueror.'[109] The boldness and sublimity of the lesson conveyed in this couplet predominates over the poetry, and this is the case throughout the works of Sâdee. How different are the sweet and musical strains of Hâfiz! whose whole fame rests upon the creative fancy of his imagination, and the easy flow of his numbers. He delights us by the very scorn with which he rejects all sobriety of thought, and all continuity of subject. As a poet he is one of the first favourites of his countrymen, whose enthusiastic admiration is given to passages in his works that your taste would condemn; for instance, when referring to the fiction which relates that the tulip first sprung up in the soil which was moistened with the blood of Ferhâd, the celebrated lover of Sheereen, he says, 'Perhaps the tulip feared the evils of destiny, Thence, while it lives, it bears the wine-goblet on its stalk.'[110] "No conceit can be more fanciful, and you will perhaps add, more extravagant; but this stanza is most particularly admired by the Persians, much more so than a succeeding one in the same ode, where the poet, with a simplicity and feeling that will delight you, gives the reason for not having left his native place. 'They will not allow me to proceed upon my travels, Those gentle gales of Moselláy, That limpid stream of Rooknâbâd.'[111]