When five and sixty years had passed me by
I viewed my task with more anxiety,
And as my yearning to achieve it grew
My fortune's star receded from my view.
Persians well read and men of high degree
Wrote all my work out and would take no fee.
I over-looked from far, and thou hadst said
That they had rather handselled me instead!
Naught but their praises had I for my part,
And while they praised I had a broken heart.
The mouths of their old money-bags were tied,
Whereat mine ardent heart was mortified.
Of famous nobles of this town 'Alí,
The Dílamite,*
most shared the work with me,
For he, a man of ardent temper made,
Through kindliness of soul forwent no aid.
Husain, son of Kutíb, a Persian lord,
Asked me for naught without its due reward,
But furnished gold and silver, clothes and meat,
And found me ways and means, and wings and feet.
As for taxation, naught thereof know I;
All at mine ease in mine own quilt I lie.
What time my years attained to ten times seven
And one my poetry surmounted heaven.
For five and thirty years I bore much pain
Here in this Wayside Inn in quest of gain,
But all the five and thirty years thus past
Naught helped; they gave my travail to the blast,
And my hopes too have gone for evermore
Now that mine age all but hath reached fourscore.
I end the story of Sháh Yazdagird,
And in Sapandármad, the day of Ard,
And year four hundred of Muhammad's Flight,
The last words of this royal book I write.
For ever flourishing be Sháh Mahmúd,
His head still green, his heart with joy imbued.
I have so lauded him that publicly
And privily my words will never die.
Of praises from the Great I had much store;
The praises that I give to him are more.
May he, the man of wisdom, live for aye,
His doings turn to his content alway.
This tale of sixty thousand couplets I
Have left to him by way of memory.
The Sháhnáma of Firdausí is ended.