This rolling hostelry we call the world, where light and darkness alternate, is but the ruin of a Jamshid's entertainment of a hundred Kings, or e'en a faint memento of a host of hunters like to Bahram's self. 68. To-day when fortune's rose is burgeoning, fill high the cup. Drink deep, O friend, drink deep, for time is not thy friend or ever willingly repeats a day like this. 69. This palace where great Bahram loved to drink now herds the young gazelle, and in it lions sleep. Where Bahram snared the swift wild ass, the snare of Time has in its turn snared him. 70. The clouds expand and weep upon the earth. No longer can we live without the amaranthine cup. The tender green glads weary eyes to-day, but oh! that emerald verdure growing from our dust, whose sight will it rejoice? 71. To-day, which we call Adine [Wednesday], leave the tiny cup and drink wine from a bowl. If other days you drank but one fair bowl, to-day drink two, for Adine ranks its fellow days, save one. 72. O heart! since this world makes you sad, since souls so pure must leave the tenement of clay, go, sit upon the verdure of the field sometimes, ere verdure springs in turn from your own dust. 73. This wine, which by its nature hath a multitude of forms, which now is animal and now is plant, can never cease to be, for its imperishable self ordains a lasting life though forms may disappear. 74. No smoke ascends above my holocaust of crime: could man ask more? This hand, which man's injustice raises to my head, no comfort brings, even though it touch the hem of saintly robes. 75. The one on whom you surely most rely, will be your enemy, if but you cleanse the eyes that are within. Far better, for the short time which remains, to count but little on our friends. The talk of men to-day is but a broken reed. 76. O heedless man! this veil of flesh is naught; this nine-fold vault of brilliant heaven is naught. Then give thyself to joy in this disordered place [the world], for life is but an instant wed to it, and that is equally naught. 77. Now bring me dancers, wine, and a houri with charming, ravishing features--if houris there be. Or find a beautiful brook within a green ravine, if such there be. Ask nothing better; think no more of Hell's hot penalties, for, verily, none is, nor any Paradise more fair than that I sing, if Paradise there be. 78. Came an old man from out the tavern drunk, his prayer-rug on his shoulders and a bowl of wine in hand. I said to him: Aged man! what meaneth this? He answered me: Drink wine, my friend, for this world is naught but wind. 79.