Explore "Ferishtah's Fancies" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Anyhow, once full Dervish, youngsters came / To gather up his own-words, 'neath a rock / Or else a palm, by pleasant Nishapur.
Said some one, as Ferishtah paused abrupt, / Reading a certain passage from the roll / Wherein is treated of Lord Ali's life: / "Master, explain this incongruity! / When I dared question 'It is beautiful, / But is it true? ' -- thy answer was 'In truth / Lives beauty. ' I persisting -- 'Beauty -- yes, / In thy mind and in my mind, every mind / That apprehends: but outside -- so to speak -- / Did beauty live in deed as well as word, / Was this life lived, was this death died -- not dreamed? ' / 'Many attested it for fact,' saidst thou. / 'Many! ' but mark, Sir! Half as long ago / As such things were, -- supposing that they were, -- / Reigned great Shah Abbas: he too lived and died / -- How say they? Why, so strong of arm, of foot / So swift, he stayed a lion in his leap / On a stag's haunch, -- with one hand grasped the stag, / With one struck down the lion: yet, no less, / Himself, that same day, feasting after sport. / Perceived a spider drop into his wine, / Let fall the flagon, died of simple fear. / So all say, -- so dost thou say?"