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Created of the dust thou wast and cam’st to life And eloquence didst learn and spokest many a word;
Then to the dust again returnedst and wast dead, As ’twere from out the dust, indeed, thou’dst never stirred.
His son Ali Shar grieved for him and mourned him after the wont of men of condition; nor did he cease therefrom till his mother died also, not long afterward, when he did with her as he had done with his father. Then he sat in the shop, selling and buying and consorting with none of God’s creatures, in accordance with his father’s injunction.
On this wise he abode for a year, at the end of which time there came in to him certain whoreson fellows by craft and companied with him, till he turned with them to lewdness and swerved from the right way, drinking wine in goblets and frequenting the fair night and day; for he said in himself, ‘My father amassed this wealth for me, and if I spend it not, to whom shall I leave it? By Allah, I will not do save as saith the poet:
If all the days of thy life thou get And heap up treasure, to swell thy hoard,
When wilt thou use it and so enjoy That thou hast gathered and gained and stored?’
Then he ceased not to squander his wealth all tides of the day and watches of the night, till he had made away with it all and abode in evil case and troubled at heart. So he sold his shop and lands and so forth, and after this he sold the clothes off his body, leaving himself but one suit. Then drunkenness left him and thought came to him, and he fell into melancholy.
One day, when he had sat from day-break to mid-afternoon without breaking his fast, he said in himself, ‘I will go round to those on whom I spent my wealth: it may be one of them will feed me this day.’ So he went the round of them all; but, as often as he knocked at any one’s door,
