The Caravan of Shahid
Rudakiرودکی
کاروان شهید رفت از پیش
Shahid's caravan has gone on ahead;
وآن ما رفته گیر و می‌اندیش
count ours as gone as well, and think on it.
از شمار دو چشم یک تن کم
By the count of eyes, one person fewer;
وز شمار خرد هزاران بیش
by the count of wisdom, thousands more.
A note for readers
Two couplets of an elegy for Shahid of Balkh, a poet and thinker of the Samanid age who died before Rudaki. The second couplet is often quoted: the world has lost only one pair of eyes, but a wisdom worth thousands. Only fragments of the poem survive; the couplets that follow it on Ganjoor share its rhyme but may not belong to the same passage.
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.