Page:The Mesnevī (Volume 2).pdf/42

 One who is slain by a king like this, he (the king) leads him to fortune and to the best (most honourable) estate.

Unless he (the king) had seen advantage to him (the gold- smith) in doing violence to him, how should that absolute Mercy have sought to do violence?

The child trembles at the barber's scalpel (but) the fond mother is happy in that pain (of her child).

He takes half a life and gives a hundred lives (in exchange): he gives that which enters not into your imagination.

You are judging (his actions) from (the analogy of) yourself, but you have fallen far, far (away from the truth). Consider well!

There was a greengrocer who had a parrot, a sweet-voiced green talking parrot.

(Perched) on the bench, it would watch over the shop (in the owner's absence) and talk finely to all the traders.

In addressing human beings it would speak (like them); it was (also) skilled in the song of parrots.

(Once) it sprang from the bench and flew away; it spilled the bottles of rose-oil.

Its master came from the direction of his house and seated himself on the bench at his ease as a merchant does.

(Then) he saw the bench was full of oil and his clothes greasy; he smote the parrot on the head: it was made bald by the blow.

For some few days it refrained from speech; the greengrocer, in repentance, heaved deep sighs,

Tearing his beard and saying, "Alas! the sun of my prosperity has gone under the clouds.

Would that my hand had been broken (powerless) at that moment! How (ever) did I strike (such a blow) on the head of that sweet-tongued one?"

He was giving presents to every dervish, that he might get back the speech of his bird.

After three days and three nights, he was seated on the bench, distraught and sorrowful, like a man in despair,

Showing the bird every sort of marvel (in the hope) that maybe it would begin to speak.

Meanwhile a bare-headed dervish, clad in a jawlaq (coarse woollen frock), passed by, with a head hairless as the outside of bowl and basin.

Thereupon the parrot began to talk, screeched at the dervish and said, "Hey, fellow!

How were you mixed up with the bald, O baldpate? Did you, then, spill oil from the bottle?" NM