Explore "Ferishtah's Fancies" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Going his rounds one day in Ispahan, -- / Halfway on Dervishhood, not wholly there, -- / Ferishtah, as he crossed a certain bridge, / Came startled on a well-remembered face. / "Can it be? What, turned melon-seller -- thou? / Clad in such sordid garb, thy seat yon step / Where dogs brush by thee and express contempt? / Methinks, thy head-gear is some scooped-out gourd! / Nay, sunk to slicing up, for readier sale, / One fruit whereof the whole scarce feeds a swine? / Wast thou the Shah's Prime Minister, men saw / Ride on his right-hand while a trumpet blew / And Persia hailed the Favorite? Yea, twelve years / Are past, I judge, since that transcendency, / And thou didst peculate and art abased; / No less, twelve years since, thou didst hold in hand / Persia, couldst halve and quarter, mince its pulp / As pleased thee, and distribute -- melon-like -- / Portions to whoso played the parasite, / Or suck -- thyself -- each juicy morsel. How / Enormous thy abjection, -- hell from heaven, / Made tenfold hell by contrast! Whisper me! / Dost thou curse God for granting twelve years' bliss / Only to prove this day 's the direr lot?"
Whereon the beggar raised a brow, once more / Luminous and imperial, from the rags. / "Fool, does thy folly think my foolishness / Dwells rather on the fact that God appoints / A day of woe to the unworthy one, / Than that the unworthy one, by God's award, / Tasted joy twelve years long? Or buy a slice, / Or go to school! " / To school Ferishtah went; / And, schooling ended, passed from Ispahan / To Nishapur, that Elburz looks above / -- Where they dig turquoise: there kept school himself, / The melon-seller's speech, his stock in trade. / Some say a certain Jew adduced the word / Out of their book, it sounds so much the same. / אח־הטוב נקבל מאח האלהים / ואח־הדע לא נקבל ׃ In Persian phrase, / "Shall we receive good at the hand of God / And evil not receive? " But great wits jump.