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and his reward after thirty years of toil was a long exile.

'In vain through sixty thousand verses clear

He sang of feuds and battles, friend and foe,
Of the frail heart of Kaous, spent with fear,
And Kal Khosrau who vanished in the snow,
And white-haired Zal who won the secret love
Of Rudabeh where water-lilies blow,
And lordliest Rustem, armed by gods above

With every power and virtue mortals known."

For this inestimable service of holding aloft over Persian history the torch of the imagination until it lay clear and luminous in the sight of the centuries, Firdousi was condemned to learn the bitterness of wide and restless wanderings. Many a Tartar camp knew him; Herat, the mountains about the Caspian, Astrabad, the Tigris, and Bagdad saw the white-haired poet pass, or accorded him a brief and broken rest from journeying. There is an atmosphere of poetry about these ancient names, but no association is likely to linger longer in the memory of men than the fact that they were stations in Firdousi's exile. It is one of the unconscious gifts of genius that it bestows immortality upon all who come into relation with it. But the crowning touch of pathos came at the close, when the long withheld treasure entered the gates of Tous as the body of the poet was borne out of the city to

its last repose. The repentance of Mahmoud had come too late; he had blindly thrust aside the rich

est crown of good fame ever offered to a Persian king.

But there are sadder stories than that of Firdousi; one story, notably, which all men recall instinctively when they speak of exile. The Persian poet had written the "Epic of Kings" in a palace, and with the resources of a king at command, but Dante was a homeless wanderer in the years which saw the birth of the Divine Comedy. To that great song in which the heart of Medievalism was to live forever, Florence contributed nothing but the anguish of soul through which the mind slowly finds its way to the highest truth. A noble nature, full of deep convictions, fervent loves, with the sensitiveness and prophetic sight of genius, cut off from all natural channels of growth, activity, and ambition, condemned to

". . . . prove how salt a savor ha'h

....

The bread of others, and how hard a path

To climb and to descend the stranger's stairs."

Surely no great man ever ate his bread wet with tears of deeper bitterness than Dante. One has but to recall his stern love of truth and his intense sensitiveness to injustice, to imagine in some degree what fathomless depths of suffering lay hidden from the eyes of men under that calm, majestic composure of manner and speech. The familiar story of his encounter with the Florentine blacksmith comes to mind as indicating how his proud spirit resented the slightest injustice. One morn

ing, as the blacksmith was singing snatches from the song of the new poet, Dante passed by, listened a moment, and then, in a sudden passion, strode into the shop and began throwing the implements which the smith had about him into the street.

"What are you doing? Are you mad?" cried the blacksmith, so overcome with astonishment that he made no effort to protect his property.

"And what are you doing?" replied the poet, fast emptying the shop of its tools.

"I am working at my proper business, and you are spoiling my work."

"If you do not wish me to spoil your things, do not spoil mine."

"What thing of yours am I spoiling?"

"You are singing something of mine, but not as I wrote it. I have no other trade but this, and you spoil it for me."

He

The poet departed as abruptly as he came. had satisfied the sense of injustice done him by swift punishment; and it does not surprise us to be told by Sacchetti that the blacksmith, having collected his scattered tools and returned to his work, henceforth sang other songs. This simple incident discloses that sensitiveness to injustice which made the banishment of Dante one long torture of soul. They utterly mistake the nature of greatness who imagine that the bitterest sorrow of such experiences as those of Firdousi and Dante lies in loss of those things which most men value; the sharpest thorn

in such crowns is the sense of ingratitude and injustice, the consciousness of the possession of great gifts rejected and cast aside. There is nothing more tragic in all the range of life than the fate of those who, like Jeremiah, Cassandra, and Tiresias, are condemned to see the truth, to speak it, and to be rebuked and rejected by the men about them. Could anything be more agonizing than to see clearly an approaching danger, to point it out, and be thrust aside with laughter or curses, and then to watch, helpless and solitary, the awful and implacable approach of doom? In some degree this lot is shared by every poet, and to the end of time every poet will find such a sorrow a part of his birthright.

"After all," said Rosalind, suddenly breaking the silence of thought that has evidently traveled along the same path as my own—“after all, I'm not sure that they are to be pitied.”

"Pity is the last word I should think of in connection with them; it is only a confusion of ideas which makes us even feel like pitying them. The real business of life, as Carlyle tried so hard to make us believe, is to find the truth and to live by it. If, in the doing of this, what men call happiness falls to our lot, well and good; but it must be as an incident, not as an end. There come to great, solitary, and sorely smitten souls moments of clear sight, of assurance of victory, of unspeakable fellowship with truth and life and God, which outweigh years of sorrow and bitterness. Firdousi

knew that he had left Persia a priceless possession, and the Purgatorio of Dante was not too much to pay for the Paradiso."

"And yet," said Rosalind slowly, looking into the fire, and thinking, perhaps, of the children asleep with happy dreams, and all the sweet peace of the home-"and yet how much they lose!"

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