The answer was briefly as follows: "Thy boast is that thou wilt in two short months Ravage my country, scathe with fire and sword The empire of Irán; but on thyself Heap not destruction; pause before thy pride Hurries thee to thy ruin.

He sees evil only in the shape of some moral baseness, falsehood, envy, arrogance, and the like, to be scathed in passing by the good man's scorn, or else in the shape of a dark mystery of pain, to be endured by those on whom it causelessly falls in a proud though undefiant silence.