Poetry
The poetry of Nasir Khusraw is replete with advice and wisdom. Being the representative of the Fatimid Imams in Khorasan, Nasir guided his followers through his poetry. His Persian poetry is enjoyed by the average Persian speaker of today and is taught in grade school.
Have you heard? A squash vine grew beneath a towering tree.
In only twenty days it grew and spread and put forth fruit.
Of the tree it asked: "How old are you? How many years?"
Replied the tree: "Two hundred it would be, and surely more."
The squash laughed and said: "Look, in twenty days, I've done
More than you; tell me, why are you so slow?"
The tree responded: "O little Squash, today is not the day
of reckoning between the two of us.
"Tomorrow, when winds of autumn howl down on you me,
then shall it be known for sure which one of us is the most resilient!"
نشنیده‌ای که زیر چناری کدو بنی بر رست و بردوید برو بر به روز بیست؟
پرسید از آن چنار که تو چند ساله‌ای؟ --- گفتا دویست باشد و اکنون زیادتی است
خندید ازو کدو که من از تو به بیست روز --- بر تر شدم بگو تو که این کاهلی ز چیست
او را چنار گفت که امروز ای کدو --- با تو مرا هنوز نه هنگام داوری است
فردا که بر من و تو وزد باد مهرگان ---
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Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“Prose—it might be speculated—is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of “communication”; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider’s delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds.”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)