The death of Cardinal Mazarin furnishes another remarkable illustration
of Saadi's sentiment. A day or two before he died, the cardinal caused
his servant to carry him into his magnificent art gallery, where, gazing
upon his collection of pictures and sculpture, he cried in anguish, "And
must I leave all these?" Dr. Johnson may have had Mazarin's words in
mind when he said to Garrick, while being shown over the famous actor's
splendid mansion: "Ah, Davie, Davie, these are the things that make a
death-bed terrible!"
Few passages of Shakspeare are more admired than these lines:
And this our life, exempt from public haunts,
Finds _tongues in trees_, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.[23]
[23] Cf. these lines, from Herrick's "Hesperides":
But you are _lovely leaves_, where we
May read, how soon things have
Their end, tho' ne'er so brave;
And after they have shown their pride,
Like you, a while, they glide
Into the grave.
Saadi had thus expressed the same sentiment before him: "The foliage of
a newly-clothed tree, to the eye of a discerning man, displays a whole
volume of the wondrous works of the Creator." Another Persian poet,
Jami, in his beautiful mystical poem of _Yusuf wa Zulaykha_, says:
"Every leaf is a tongue uttering praises, like one who keepeth crying,
'In the name of God.
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