High-springing arch of heaven! Oh! why dost thou,
When eld is on me, keep me thus forlorn?
Thou madest much of me in youth but now
Thou passest my decrepitude with scorn.
The pampered blossoms take a sallow hue,
The pictured silk is cheapened by much stress,
The dainty cypress-tree is bent in two
Within the garth, the bright lamp lustreless,
The mountain-top once black is capped with snow,
The soldiers mark the Sháh's deficiencies:
Thou wast a mother to me long ago,
Who needs shed blood-drops at thy tyrannies.
I find no wisdom or good faith in thee;
Thy dark proceedings aggravate my lot:
Oh! would that thou hadst never nurtured me,
Or, having nurtured, persecuted not!
Whene'er I quit this gloom I will arraign
This tyranny of thine before the Just,
Of thee before the All Holy One complain
With clamourings and head bestrewn with dust.

Time saw how eld increased my misery,
But laid the more part of the blame on me,
And thus to me high heaven made reply:—
“O thou that art not wronged and yet dost cry!
Why lookest thou to me for good and ill?
Do such complaints as thine become the sage?
In everything thou betterest me still,
And canst the famine of thy soul assuage
With knowledge. Food, sleep, choice of home are thine;
To good and ill 'tis thine to seek the path;
All that thou chargest is no fault of mine,
For neither sun nor moon such knowledge hath.
Ask Him that made them to be Guide to thee,
Made day and night, religion, law, who saith:—
‘Be,’ and all is as He would have it be.
A fool is he that knoweth other Faith.
In His creation I am but a thrall,
A servant unto Him who fashioned me;
To do His bidding is mine all in all;
I never swerve from His authority.
Turn then to God, to Him for succour fly,
Imploring no unconscionable boon,
And own that none is master of the sky
Save He that kindled Venus, Sun, and Moon.
His blessing on Muhammad's spirit be,
And on his comrades all increasingly.”*