I, like the serpent of the Speaker,* will overpower him in
a minute.”

He wrote the following couplet in praise of the prophet:—

“The seal of thy finality has broken the seals of old
And has introduced in its device a new and fresh design.”

The following verses are selected from one of his poems con­cerning one of the great ones among those of our kind, ingenious in oppression:—*

“How long wilt thou boast saying, ‘In magic
I am a Sāmirī, a Sāmirī, a Sāmirī’?*
Every breath of mine is one of the miracles of ‘Īsa,
A flame of light from the bush of Moses.*
In eloquence I am the phoenix of the age,
The teacher of all the eloquent.
Each breath of mine deprives magic itself of patience (in
enduring its inferiority).
Each speech of mine is magic that would deceive angels.
I am the king of the kingdom of omniscience,
I am the wise man of the region of sublime realities;
I am the jeweller who values the chain of rhetoric,
I am the assayer of the coin of eloquence.
All this am I. To-day, in this contest,
Thou dost but take a flame of fire on thy tongue.
Boast not that thou art the discoverer of spiritual truths,
Thou art no candle, let not the machinery of thy tongue be
too well greased.
O thou who art formed of flame, of jewels of fine water,

Make no boast, since thou hast not even dust in thy pouch.
Although thy mind has knocked at the door of sense
No new conceit has fallen on our ears.
That which thou sayest has been said by others,
The pearls which thou stringest have been strung by others.
For the house of verse which thou hast adorned
Thou hast borrowed both the water and the clay from
others.
The painted ceiling which is in this house ³⁵⁵
Has its colours from a stranger's pencil.
Thy wit is like that of a gardener
Who lays out his garden with plants taken from others.
The verdure in that garden is from another lawn,
Each beautiful flower that blooms there is from another
garden;
Each bud of it, though it be life-cherishing,
Is sprung from the heart's blood of another than thee;
The unfruitful willow which rears its head
Has drawn its leaves from that seed already decorated with
designs of trees.*
Its freshness is from no rain which thou hast bestowed on
it,
But is from the sweat of the brow of thy friends.
How long wilt thou burn with desire for the money of
others?
How long wilt thou glue thy eyes to the property of
others?
Collect not the cash of those who foster eloquence,
Fill not thy pouch with the gold of others.
Turn thy thoughts from the drink of others,
Drink water from thine own fountain.
If thou be Khiẓr, where is thy water of life?
If thou be sugarcane, where is thy sweet branch?
Like a date-palm thou raisest thy head to the sky,
But thou givest no fruit but dry date-stones.

The cypress whose head brushes the sky,
Is void of all flavour of fruit.
Why all this vaunting of thine own eloquence?
Why all this ridicule of a heart-broken one like me?
If I from shame open not my mouth
Do not attribute my silence to folly.
My breast does not contain a stone as does a ripe date,
I am like the oyster-shell, full of pearls, but close my
lips.
If I release my tongue from its bonds
The eloquent will refrain from opening their lips.
Do not cast gibes at me as Satan did at Adam.
Consider my state and refrain from speech.
I am a Sāmirī, and can, by the power of my spells
And magical power, bring into existence a puppet form.
I can throw Venus and the moon into turmoil,
I can throw Hārūt's* magic scroll into his well.
I am all this,—a magician who is magic's self,
From whose words magic has been spread abroad.
I, who am famous for my words of magic,
Am myself the sky, the moon, and Venus.
Sāmirīs are in every curl of my hair,
Babylons are in the well of my magic.

The wealth which springs from this work is mine, to my ³⁵⁶
heart's desire,
The coin of this kingdom is struck in my name.
Learn from my speech the beauties of style.
Have no false shame: lay hold of a master's skirt.
He who comes as a true disciple to his master
Gathers in both worlds the treasure of happiness.
Not one line of thy verse is correct.
Thy verses are the laughing-stock of the eloquent.
Although nobody has told thee this to thy face
And nobody rakes up thy faults before thee,
Yet thy detractors, in thy absence,
Delight the meetings of eloquent men;
When thy verses are quoted among them
They pick out thy errors one by one.
They praise thy poetry to thy face
And curse and abuse thee behind thy back.
Thou art a friend of none and hast none for thy friend.
Thou hast, alas, no bosom friend to sympathize with thee,
To show thee what thy faults are
Or what it is (in thy verse) that thy auditors criticize.”

When I was writing this memoir and asked Nishānī for some of his verses as a memorial of him he wrote me the following letter:—

“Having made the jewels of the mines of holy poverty and humility and the gems of the oceans of despondency and restless­ness, which the jewellers of the workshop of yearning and the ocean rangers of the handicraft of taste have washed with the limpid water of sincerity and threaded on the string of suppli­cation, a sacrifice to the joy-giving footsteps of that incomparable one of this age, that miracle of the mercy of Providence, whose heart, with its knowledge of hidden mysteries, is as a world-displaying cup* to prudent searchers after truth, and the mirror of whose mind is the astrolabe of the astronomers of the Path, I humbly represent to those who are admitted to his heavenly assembly, that gathering where angels sit, swearing by God and ³⁵⁷ by the honour of God (He is blessed and exalted!), that by the blessing of the consideration which has been bestowed by that incomparable and unequalled Being on the leisure time of this humble one, by asking him to collect his scattered scribblings, I desire to give a hundred praises for the favour which he has shown to me. I am writing for his servants two fragments, one of prose composition, and the other of manavīs, et caetera, and have half finished the work. Please God, I shall pack them up and despatch them to-morrow or the day after. For the present I have sent several couplets from that manavī in the opening couplet of which the hemistich, ‘I am a Sāmirī, a Sāmirī, a Sāmirī,’* occurs. Pray be pleased to correct it and to set aside what may be fit for reproduction. May you remain in health.”

Among his letters was the following regarding the emperor's seal with its die containing the names of his majesty's great ancestors as far as the lord of the (fortunate) conjunction (Tīmūr), which he wrote and sent to me.*

“O outstripper of the swift runners of the subtleties of sciences in difficulties arising in the assemblies of the noble and the learned, shooter of the arrows of boundless knowledge from the bows of perfections against the globes of the hearts of high and low, striker of the disavowing ordinances with the swords of brilliant proofs, and opener of the doors of the obscurities of truths with the keys of convincing arguments; how art thou in this age, on every day of which people of penetration have known the signification of ‘on that day shall a man fly from his brother and his mother and his father?’* Verily the object of the gaze of the aspirations of the people of this age is the defects of others. Verily the brethren of this age are searchers after the faults of others, and they do not regard their own faults; and this is owing to the hardness of their hearts, and the dulness of their hearing, and the ³⁵⁸ dimness of their sight. ‘Their hearts and their ears hath God sealed up and over their eyes is a covering.’* How, therefore, should they know their own affairs, much less those of their brethren? And they are excused for they are led astray into this error. And tell me of thyself, of thy soul which is angelic in its disposition, in its goodness and purity, and, like the sun, diffusing rays and bright light, incomparable in natural and acquired talents, comprehending the truths both of creation and of creation's God; an epitome of precious and world-wide perfec­tions; may God most High preserve it from all ills which can affect the body and all calamities which can befall the soul, with a perpetual and ineffable protection; and may the raised dust of detriment not settle on the skirt of its perfection. My employ­ment from the 1st Ẕī-l-Ḥijjah* to the end of Rabī‘u-l-awwal* has been the engraving of the seal of the just king, the perfect Khalīfah* on which are engraved his sublime titles and the names of his exalted ancestors as far as Amīr Tīmūr, the lord of the (fortunate) conjunction.* The seal is wide and round and contains eight circles, one in the middle, and the rest clustered around it.”*