بخش 26 - سخن فردوسی

When this book fell into my hands, my hand and heart turned to the task as my years advanced. I looked upon the earlier composition and found it weak, many verses unsound. I spoke so that the king might know what harm false speech bears. If speech must be like this, then better to hold the tongue and not yoke one’s nature to toil; do not descend into a mine where no gem is found; and if one’s nature is not flowing like water, do not approach this royal book. There was an ancient book from bygone days—a treasure like a cup of jewels, yet in prose—whose linkage had slipped far from men’s temperaments; as if six thousand years had passed over it. No one could bind a proper connection upon it, and this joyous heart grew full of thought. Even so, a speaker appeared who gave a little linkage to it—of war and feast, one from a thousand—and set a king upon the throne, and from the chiefs he gained honor and treasure, though by his own ill temper he suffered. He was a panegyrist of kings, dwelling in the palace of diademed lords; his speech wandered through the city and renewed the ancient age. I took this book as a good omen and labored for many years, yet I found no exalted, generous benefactor, and silence was the only cure. I saw the seat of the fortunate as a garden all trees, with no doorway—bearing only the name of kingship, lacking its diadem; were I fit for that garden and good enough, I would be deemed worthy. I set speech aside for twenty years to learn who deserved this toil, until Abūlqāsem, the lord of the world—Mahmūd—appeared; through him the crown of the shahanshāhs was made anew. Mahmūd, world-king of splendor and liberality, before whom Moon and Saturn bow—his name became the crown of the book, and a dark heart brightened like ivory; in bounty, justice, counsel, and art, none was more worthy of the crown. He came and sat upon the throne of justice; he surpassed the kings and counted not the very breath of the tale; dinar and dust are alike to him; in feast with gold and in battle with the blade, he never withholds from the petitioner.