eats the brazen
drum,
'Ho! ye elephants, to this work must your mightinesses come.'"

"Mighty natures war with mighty: when the raging tempests blow,
O'er the green rice harmless pass they, but they lay the palm-trees
low."

"Narrow-necked to let out little, big of belly to keep much,
As a flagon is--the Vizier of a Sultan should be such."

* * * * *

"He who thinks a minute little, like a fool misuses more;
He who counts a cowry nothing, being wealthy, will be poor."

* * * * *

"Brahmans, soldiers, these and kinsmen--of the three set none in
charge:
For the Brahman, though you rack him, yields no treasure small or
large;
And the soldier, being trusted, writes his quittance with his sword,
And the kinsman cheats his kindred by the charter of the word;
But a servant old in service, worse than any one is thought,
Who, by long-tried license fearless, knows his master's anger nought."

* * * * *

"Never tires the fire of burning, never wearies Death of slaying,
Nor the sea of drinking rivers, nor the bright-eyed of betraying."

* * * * *

"From false friends that breed thee strife,
From a house with serpents rife,
Saucy slaves and brawling wife--
Get thee forth, to save thy life."

* * * * *

"Teeth grown loose, and wicked-hearted ministers, and poison trees,
Pluck them by the roots together; 'tis the thing that giveth ease."

"Long-tried friends are friends to cleave to--never leave thou these
i' the lurch:
What man shuns the fire as sinful for that once it burned a church?"

"Raise an evil soul to honour, and his evil bents remain;
Bind a cur's tail ne'er so straightly, yet it curleth up again."

"How, in sooth, should Trust and Honour change the evil nature's root?
Though one watered them with nectar, poison-trees bear deadly fruit."

"Safe within the husk of silence guard the seed of counsel so
That it break not--being broken, then the seedling will not grow."

* * * * *

"Even as one who grasps a serpent, drowning in the bitter sea,
Death to hold and death to loosen--such is life's perplexity."

* * * *