Professor Cowbell

Quotation of the Week

"AugusTous said that he found Rome of brick, and left it marble, and Ferdowsi found his country almost without a literature, and has left her a poem that all succeeding poets could only imitate and never surpass, and which, indeed, can rival them all even in their peculiar styles, and perhaps stands as alone in Asia as Homer's epics in Europe ... His versification is exquisitely melodious, and never interrupted by harsh forms of construction, and the poem runs on from beginning to end, like a river, in an unbroken current of harmony. Verse after verse ripples on the ear and washes up its tribute of rhyme, and we stand, as it were, on the shore, and gaze with wonder into the world that lies buried beneath a world of feeling and thought and action that has passed away from earth's memory for ever, whilst its palaces and heroes are dimly seen mirrored below as in the enchanted lake of Arabian story."