Sure no one has this guest repulsed with scorn. Does it befit the soul magnanimous To outrage and bring scorn upon a guest? Tell me what harm he ever did to thee, This pilgrim foreigner and hermit pure, That thou hast undertaken thus to cleave His bosom with that cruel blade of thine? Was it because he sang with flowing heart? A song of sorrow gives our souls delight. He was the minstrel of our happy lawn, And won the flowers to raise their chalice higher. Not lawlessly my fetters he endured. Then what disgrace for me can be in this? For beauty and accomplishment complete Have always made their orisons to love. And beauty’s self is perfected through love, And beauty without love endures eclipse. When love entwines itself round beauty’s form It gives no stigma to the thing it holds. And nothing can the crown of beauty mar, Though thousand thousands babble out her name. Was Joseph in Egyptian lands disgraced, When he was object of the people’s love? Go, leave the poor man in tranquillity, Harass him not, be pitiful to him. Thou must not him with cruelty oppress, But treat him after this with kindliness.” When the thorn heard the Rose’s reprimand, Like needles on his head uprose his hair. What he had heard was not what he desired, And trouble overspread his countenance. And now the royal audience was o’er, He went to visit Spring, the garden’s king. XXXVI THE HARD-HEARTED THORN SLANDERS THE LOVESICK NIGHTINGALE BEFORE THE MONARCH OF THE SPRING He hurried to the palace of the shah, And standing on his feet before the throne, He said: “My sovereign to the end of time, May thy prosperity unbroken be! There lingers in the rose garden a rogue By day and night, a rogue incurable Who by the Rose infatuated lives, And drunken with love’s goblet is distraught. Nor night nor day he ceases his complaint As he relates the beauties of the Rose, Nor night nor day can I o’ermaster him. The beggar still with fire poetic burns, He has nor shame nor self-respect in life, And finds alone in drunkenness delight. The Rose herself is fettered by his lay, And sympathizes with this amorous sot. Now the affair has reached the final stage, And he has gained the notice of the Rose.” Soon as the monarch had heard the thorn’s address, Perturbed, he thus addressed the listening slave: “Where is this beggar, pale and passionate? Let him be seized and in a cell confined.” And so he sent his hunter to the grove, A hunter of inexorable heart. And said to him, “Go seek the beggar-man And put him without pity into chains.” Soon as the firman of the king went out They quickly scoured the glades of Gulistan, And sought amid the rose-garden parterres For traces of the tuneful Nightingale. XXXVII