dertook the task, the world and its wise men having come to the belief
that in thwackings there was ignominy to the soul of man, and a tarnish
on the lustre of heroes. On that score, hear the words of the poet, a
vain protest:

Ye that nourish hopes of fame!
Ye who would be known in song!
Ponder old history, and duly frame
Your souls to meek acceptance of the thong.

Lo! of hundreds who aspire,
Eighties perish-nineties tire!
They who bear up, in spite of wrecks and wracks,
Were season 'd by celestial hail of thwacks.

Fortune in this mortal race
Builds on thwackings for its base;
Thus the All-Wise doth make a flail a staff,
And separates his heavenly corn from chaff.

Think ye, had he never known
Noorna a belabouring crone,
Shibli Bagarag would have shaved Shagpat
The unthwack'd lives in chronicle a rat!

'Tis the thwacking in this den
Maketh lions of true men!
So are we nerved to break the clinging mesh
Which tames the noblest efforts of poor flesh.

Feshnavat became the Master's Vizier, and Abarak remained at the right
hand of Shibli Bagarag, his slave in great adventure. No other condition
than bondage gave peace to Abarak. He was of the class enumerated by the
sage:

Who, with the strength of giants, are but tools,
The weighty hands which serve selected fools.

Now, this was how it was in the case of Baba Mustapha, and the four
Kings, and Feshnavat, and Abarak, and Ravaloke, and Kadza, together with
Shagpat; but, in the case of Noorna bin Noorka, surely she was withering
from a sting of the scorpion shot against her bosom, but the Seven Sons
of Aklis gave her a pass into Aklis on the wings of Koorookh, and
Gulrevaz, the daughter of Aklis, tended her, she that was alone capable
of restoring her, and counteracting the malice of the scorpion by the
hand of purity. So Noorna, prospered; but Shibli Bagarag drooped in
uncertainty of her state, and was as a reaper in a field of harvest,
around whom lie the yellow sheaves, and the brown beam of autumn on his
head, the blaze of plenty; yet is he joyless and stands musing, for one
is away who should be there, and without whom the goblet of Success
giveth an unsweetened draught, and there is nothing pleasant in life, and
the flower on the summit of achievement is blighted. At last, as he was
listlessly dispensing justice in t