y the Arabian
poet-hero Antar, in his famous _Mu'allaka_, or prize-poem, which is at
least thirteen hundred years old, where he says: "Many a consort of a
fair one, whose beauty required no ornaments, have I laid prostrate on
the field."

Yet one Persian poet, at least, namely, Nakhshabi, held a different
opinion: "Beauty," he says, "adorned with ornaments, portends disastrous
events to our hearts. An amiable form, ornamented with diamonds and
gold, is like a melodious voice accompanied by the rabab." Again, he
says: "Ornaments are the universal ravishers of hearts, and an upper
garment for the shoulder is like a cluster of gems. If dress, however,"
he concedes, "may have been at any time the assistant of beauty, beauty
is always the animator of dress." It is remarkable that homely-featured
women dress more gaudily than their handsome sisters generally, thus
unconsciously bringing their lack of beauty (not to put too fine a point
on it) into greater prominence.

In common with other moralists, Saadi reiterates the maxim that learning
and virtue, precept and practice, should ever go hand in hand. "Two
persons," says he, "took trouble in vain: he who acquired wealth without
using it, and he who taught wisdom without practising it." Again: "He
who has acquired knowledge and does not practise it, is like unto him
that ploughed but did not sow." And again: "How much soever you may
study science, when you do not act wisely, you are ignorant. The beast
that they load with books is not profoundly wise and learned: what
knoweth his empty skull whether he carrieth fire-wood or books?" And yet
again: "A learned man without temperance is like a blind man carrying a
lamp: he showeth the way to others, but does not guide himself."

Ingratitude is denounced by all moralists as the lowest of vices. Thus
Saadi says: "Man is beyond dispute the most excellent of created beings,
and the vilest animal is the dog; but the sages agree that a grateful
dog is better than an ungrateful man. A dog never forgets a morsel,
though you pelt him a hundred times with stones. But if you cherish a
mean wretch for an age, he will fight with you for a mere trifle." In
language still more forcible does a Hindu poet denounce this basest of
vices: "To cut off the teats of a cow;[18] to occasion a pregnant woman
to miscarry; to injure a Brahman--are sins of the most aggravated
nature; but more atrocious than these is ingratitude."

[18] The cow is sacre