United States or Honduras ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The story appears also in the East, worked up in conjunction with myths of other nationalities, especially the Persian. It appears in Firdusi, and among later writers, in Nizami. By WALTER WHYTE
But two minutes afterwards my little seven year old daughter, rather the worse for amateur gardening, and holding a cage of white mice in her hand, appeared on the threshold, smiled at me with refreshing absence of apology, darted in, dumped the white mice on an open volume of my precious Turner Macan's edition of Firdusi, and clambering into my lap and seizing pencil and paper, instantly ordained my participation in her favourite game of "head, body and legs."
To him we owe an edition of Firdusi, and many other volumes, which came out at just the right time to supplement the knowledge already acquired of the country of the Shah. Another semi-Asiatic semi-European country was also now becoming known. This was the mountainous district of the Caucasus.
Hence it is that, putting aside the myths of the Zendavesta, we have no native authorities for Persian history of any value, until the appearance in the eleventh century of the Shah Nameh; in which, however, Firdusi has mingled the miraculous relations of those two religions by which his country had been successively subjected.
Even of 1809, the year of Eckmühl, Essling, and Wagram, and the darkest hour of German freedom, Goethe can write: "This year, considering the beautiful returns it brought me, shall ever remain dear and precious to memory," and when the final uprising against the French was imminent, he sought quietude in oriental poetry Firdusi, Hafiz, and Nisami.
Milly went a beautiful pink with embarrassment. "I'm so sorry. I thought the party would have just begun," she replied. "You don't mean to say you want to keep me kicking my heels while you go to a confounded party? I thought you knew I was off to Paris to-night, after that Firdusi manuscript, and I think of taking the Continental Express to Constantinople next week.
If thou shouldst tear me limb from limb, and cast My dust and ashes to the angry blast, Firdusi still would live, since on thy name, Mahmud, I did not rest my hopes of fame In the bright page of my heroic song, But on the God of Heaven, to whom belong Boundless thanksgivings, and on Him whose love Supports the Faithful in the realms above, The mighty Prophet! none who e'er reposed On Him, existence without hope has closed.
In his great poem, The Epic of Kings, which is founded on Persian traditions, the poet Firdusi tells us that in the combat between Rustem and Isfendiyar the arrows of the former did no harm to his adversary, "because Zerdusht had charmed his body against all dangers, so that it was like unto brass."
Perhaps there exist a few scholars who can tell us how far Emerson understood or misunderstood Saadi and Firdusi and the Koran. But we need not be disturbed for his learning. It is enough that he makes us recognize that these men were men too, and that their writings mean something not unknowable to us. The East added nothing to Emerson, but gave him a few trappings of speech.
Firdusi, the great Persian epic poet, compares human beauty to the growth of the cypress, as the highest praise he can give. No sound was to be heard except the one which had alarmed her, and this too died away at last on the morning breeze.
Word Of The Day