A Tale on Awakening from the Sleep of Heedlessness

A beloved of Jamshid died and went into the ground; they wrapped him in a silk shroud, soft as a silkworm's thread. After some days he came to the tomb to weep over him with bitter, burning grief. When he saw that the silk shroud had rotted away, he spoke to himself in thought like this: I once tore this silk from the silkworm by force; now the worms of the grave have torn it back from him. In this garden no cypress ever grew tall that the wind of death did not uproot from its base. Fate never shaped a face as fair as Joseph's without the fish of the grave swallowing it, as the whale swallowed Jonah. One day two lines of verse turned my heart to fire, when a singer sang them to the sound of the lute: Alas, for many a season without us the flowers will bloom and spring will burst open. Many a summer, winter, and spring will come and go while we are only dust and clay.