Original content

English translation

When the time of death came to the handmaiden The tree of her life became leafless The world wanted to manipulate her To straighten the path of its crooked display That face, like an unbloomed flower, still Her flower was about to be hidden in the mud When death came, her heart rose in pain For the sun of her life suddenly turned pale The handmaiden wept bitterly over her youth She wept over the tyranny of the crooked-paced wheel She said to Mihrmard's wife, 'O dear one Happiness has come to an end in my heart The world will not leave me be, what can I do? For a long and distant path has appeared before me The days have proclaimed the end of my life's span Ultimately, I must sit in the place of death We have traveled much, and since the path is so long Who knows how much more way remains? I have not seen happiness, and sorrow is countless What can I say, since there is neither heart nor time (left) But this beautiful-faced child Keep him, for God's sake For this dear child is a prince He has fallen from kingship into beggary It is fitting that a sun-like Turk be his slave For this dear one is born of the Caesar of Rome This child has God and you I have made God the witness to this word I have entrusted him to you with a hundred endearments So that tomorrow you may return him to me He has no one (else); God is his adversary (protector) Now this matter belongs to the other world' Hidden in her hair she had a ring Whose seal bore the mark of the Caesar She said to her, 'This boy with this token If you secretly deliver to the Caesar He will raise your head to the heavens with eminence He will deliver to you the cash of Korah's treasure' When both (husband and wife) listened to this speech You would say they drank poison from those lips They wept much, and it was fitting They accepted from her what was beyond that For the handmaiden, from that whirlpool of regret The water of sorrow flowed from her two narcissus (eyes) When she became afflicted with the bitterness of dying With hardship her sweet soul separated from her The fire of the day of youth died out Beside her was a child like the water of life She passed from this strait so quickly That you would say she was never in the world The world is old, but it is a child in years For in its old age, it is an infant like Zal If the old one did not have an infantile nature Its years and months would not always become new It left the leafless flower destitute Whether mother, father, or nurse, it left them behind The world has many such manipulations Not a single soul will find salvation Whether your name is 'soul' or 'world' The world will make you soulless in a moment In this world, all are drowning in the world In the other world, all are occupied with the soul Abandon the world and become the adversary of the soul Pass beyond both and become the soul of the world From the affair of this desolate woman for a time If you are a man, weep a world of blood The example of the world's affair is like a cloud Whose lightning is pain and its rain is regret Alas, you remained asleep with a hundred burnings Alas, it rains upon you night and day When the world came to an end for the handmaiden The world took her soul and became another place When the woman buried that kind one in the earth She accepted the heart-captivating child with her soul She named the heart-wounded child Hormuz The woman took him to her breast like her own heart When they made a place for his eye under the veil They nourished him with milk and sugar He was so nourished in the veil of coquetry That no voice of his came out of the veil Since he was the idol of the horizons behind the veil Then he was in the veil (mode) of lovers When that silver cypress became five years old With lullabies, tulips blossomed on his face That piece of the moon became so peerless That out of envy for his face, the moon broke into pieces If I speak a breath of the description of his face It will bring me confusion like his hair Since one glance at him was worth a soul Every moment a soul prided itself in his love Whoever heard his description from afar Would cut the citron and hand without him The whole country became full of excitement because of him For whoever saw him became senseless because of him The heart of Mihrmard, from that precious pearl Waved with happiness like the sea The world would not see a morning without his face Prayer would breathe upon him like the morning In Khuzestan, there was a king with sun-like glory Who had a five-year-old son The name of that sun-nurtured one was Bahram Who had a share of Mars other than just the name That prince's condition was like Hormuz Those two moons were of the same age together When the time came that the prince Bahram Should become like Jupiter in the science of decrees (astrology) The sovereign of the city of Khuzan, the king of the clime Sat him before a master for instruction Many of his age-mates sat together All from the soul bound their hearts to the task Of so many children, Hormuz was one Whose intellect was much and his age little From a little age he had much wisdom He took a good yield from his life When Hormuz took the slate and struck the pen His soul struck a banner from the light of knowledge In short, in a few days No teacher remained for him in skill Even if a word was like a hair From him, a single hair had a hundred faces He became so peerless in jesting That that peerless one became a proverb in the world He became so capable in justice and knowledge That the wise master became his student He learned the vocabularies of Turkish and Arabic He illuminated his heart from Hebrew and Roman The master would say thus to Mihrmard 'God sent a cow to Fereydun In appearance, he has the royal glory In meaning, he has intense awareness I know not where he will reach For now, indeed, he will reach us' Hormuz became of such awakened fortune That one can never see that in a dream Bahram would not breathe a breath without him He would not find peace for a moment without him Joyfully from their school, the king(s) Would go towards the garden at nightfall All night like two kings in heart-soothing They would stroll around the garden in play When the bird of dawn would fall to crying Like Gemini, both would go to the master When he finished with the varieties of knowledge He paid attention to the arrow, sword, cheetah, and falcon He made his two arms like galloping camels With manliness he subdued the lion-men With one hand he would pass a millstone He wouldn't tire even if he carried it a parasang He would throw the mace with strength from his fist He would hold it with his finger like a pen When Leo saw his deed on the sky It would become ashamed of his cow-headed mace When he mounted a steed like a raging elephant With difficulty the horse would carry him a mile When his arrow went half a distance from the bow The speech went into the hair or into the mim When his arrow went from the bow in haste With the arrowhead it would draw the ant like a collyrium stick When he made a target of a hair's tip Like a hair, he would split its tip apart If with force he loosed a flying arrow It would fall from this world to that world If in anger he drew an arrow It would reach the eye of Jesus's needle He would draw the arrow to the ear, and from that eye From his own ear he would deliver it to that eye And if he struck an arrow without any force He would cut off an ant's leg with the arrowhead When he took the indigo sword in his hand From his sword, the indigo sea would foam Trembling like a cloud from the fear of his sword Death would go upon the sword, tired of its soul From the heat of his sword's lightning, the renowned ones Would cast their shields on the water like rain When he untied a lasso from the saddle-strap He would throw it around the necks of lions When he struck his finger-tips at the base of the spear Gravel would sprout from the anvil! The spear was so twirling in his grip That from it, fire became quicksilver in the stone If there was granite before his lance In an hour, it would become a hundred pieces And if he threw his javelin towards the sky With a wound he would throw down the Pleiades When he became a polo-stick wielder and a field-seeker The sky became his polo-stick and the moon his ball When he threw the ball of that moon on the path The moon would carry the ball on its head from his alley He became the eye and lamp of the face of the horizons In knowledge and strength, single like his own eyebrow His fame became so esteemed That the wheel of heaven stood up because of him and fell on its head When Hormuz's years reached sixteen His face kindled a fire upon the nine worlds In goodness, they gave him a beautiful down They gave him the likeness of world-adorning His green down came out from his earlobe His down became the meadow of the fountain of immortality His green down, which was food for the soul Was an emerald color upon the ruby The tip of his lock was the lasso of soul and body His ruby lip was the affliction of man and woman Wherever there was a silver-breasted houri From the love of his face, her face was like gold An idol who saw the parrot of his down Her heart would flutter in her breast like a bird From his love, there was no sleeping for all But there was no courage to speak When his musky moon sat beneath the down A wail rose from his black down From the beauty that his down joined No one's hand would learn upon his down His down was like a parrot with wings spread A door closed on pearls and open to sugar His tulip-bed came into line from the hyacinth Like a rose petal that has musk as its thorn He had no business but watching A kebab, a wine, and a hunt A world remained amazed by his face That how a king rises from a gardener When he sat on a rose-colored steed with a face like the moon He would bind from much look...