Learn Chivalry
Jamiجامی
جوانمردا جوانمردی بیاموز
O man of chivalry, learn chivalry;
ز مردان جهان مردی بیاموز
learn true manhood from the world’s true men.
درون از کین کین جویان نگه دار
Keep your heart from the hatred of the vengeful;
زبان از طعن بدگویان نگه دار
keep your tongue from the taunts of slanderers.
نکویی کن به آن کو با تو بد کرد
Do good to the one who did you wrong,
کزان بد رخنه در اقبال خود کرد
for by that wrong he breached his own good fortune.
چو آیین نکوکاری کنی ساز
When you make doing good your custom,
نگردد با تو جز آن نیکویی باز
nothing but that good will come back to you.
A note for readers
The verses that close a prose story in the fourth ‘garden’ of the Baharestan. Ibrahim, son of Sulayman, an Umayyad prince fleeing the Abbasids at Kufa, takes refuge in a stranger’s house, then learns that his host is searching the city for him to avenge the father Ibrahim had killed. When Ibrahim confesses, the host keeps his promise of shelter, lets him go and offers him a thousand dinars. Jami draws the moral in these lines.
More poemsشعرهای دیگر
مرغی دیدم نشسته بر باره طوس
در پیش نهاده کله کیکاووس
I saw a bird perched on the ramparts of Tus,
with the skull of Kay Kavus set down before it.
A Bird on the Walls of Tus
یکی قطره باران ز ابری چکید
خجل شد چو پهنای دریا بدید
A drop of rain fell from a cloud;
it was ashamed when it saw the breadth of the sea.
A Drop of Rain
ابتدای کار سیمرغ ای عجب
جلوه‌گر بگذشت بر چین نیم‌شب
The beginning of the Simorgh’s story, how wonderful:
in all his splendour he passed over China at midnight.