Melon-Seller, The

( Ferishtah’s Fancies , II.) The second of the le ons learned by Ferishtah on his way to dervish hood. He sees a well-remembered face in a melon-seller near a bridge. He was once the Shah’s Prime Minister: he peculated, and was disgraced. Shocked at the contrast between what the man was and has now become, Ferishtah asks him if he did not curse God for the twelve years’ bli he enjoyed only to end in misery like that? The beggar contemptuously asked his questioner if he were unwise enough to think him such a fool as to repine at God’s just punishment on sin, and to reproach Him with the happine he had tasted in the past? Job said: “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and evil not receive?” This was just what the melon-seller said. “But great wits jump”; and Ferishtah, having learned the great le on, went his way to dervish hood. The Lyric asks for a little severity from Love: so much undeserved bli has been imparted, that a little injustice seems requisite to balance things.