Page:Man in the Panther's Skin.djvu/24

 her eyebrows and lashes, her hair, her lips and teeth, cut crystal and ruby arrayed in ranks. An anvil of soft lead breaks even hard stone.

6. Now want I tongue, heart and skill for utterance! Grant me strength! And if I have aid from thee I shall have understanding, so may we succour Tariel; tenderly indeed should we cherish his memory and that of the three starlike heroes wont to serve one another.

7. Come, sit ye down, ye who have been born under the same fate; let us shed a never-drying tear for Tariel's sake. I sat me down, I, Rust'haveli, indited a poem, my heart pierced with a lance. Hitherto the tale has been told as a tale; now is it a pearl (of) measured (poesy).

8. To a lover, beauty, glorious beauty, wisdom, wealth, generosity, youth and leisure are fitting; he must be eloquent, intelligent, patient, an overcomer of mighty adversaries; who has not all these qualities lacks the character of a lover.

9. Love is tender, a thing hard to be known. True love is something apart from lust, and cannot be likened thereto; it is one thing; lust is quite another thing, and between them lies a broad boundary; in no way do they mingle—hear my saying!

10. The lover must be constant, not lewd, impure and faithless; when he is far from his beloved he must heave sigh upon sigh; his heart must be fixed on one from whom he endures wrath or sorrow if need be. I hate heartless love—embracing, kissing, noisy bussing.

11. Lovers, call not this thing love: when any longs for one to-day and another to-morrow, (lightly) bearing parting's pain. Such base sport is like mere boyish trifling; the good lover is he who suffers a world's woe.

12. There is a first (? noblest) love; it does not show, but hides its woes; (the lover) thinks of it when he is alone, and always seeks solitude; his fainting, dying,