Vis and Ramin

851 |
312 VISRAMIANI
me so. I prefer blindness to not seeing thee, and I prefer
deafness to hearing reproaches from thee. May God not
keep me a moment without thee, and may He not give thee
patience lacking me. Since thou art so angry,
life is
wearisome to me. Thou art always sad because of unjust
1
deeds, stone and iron wholly embrace in the chafing-dish.
Now the heaviness of thy heart has added fieriness to my
heart, so that if the sea were poured upon the fire of my
heart even it could not extinguish it. The mist 2 of this
land is from the smoke of my fire ; the air knows what is
hidden in my heart, and weeps because it is ill-fated. The
night snows thus because, by a miracle, one half of my body
from love is like fire and the other half like ice. How can
a man be thus? Neither angel 3 nor demon 4 is seen so
incomprehensible. Who, save me, has seen ice unthawed
by fire, or fire unextinguished by water ? For one who had
euch love in the soul, to die in snow were a shame. I
thought
this of thee : that thou wouldst save me from the
fire, but I thought not at all that thou wouldst slay me in
the snow. Say not that excessive entreaty is cowardly. I
am thy guest. Every man should honour a guest, not thus
drive him into the fields. And if thou desirest my death
and it is easy to thee slay me not so pitilessly. To kill a
guest from snow is a foul deed."
1 SatzetzJchle ? crucible, melting-pot 271.
2 Al muri, 346.
3 Angelozi, 15, 18, 44, 232. * Eshma, 253, 274.