Poems from the Divan of Hafiz

Baron Sylvestre de Sacy suggested the following explanation of the matter.[3] The second century of the Hejira was a time of fermentation and of the rise of sects. This was due in the first place to the introduction of Greek philosophy, and in the second to the rivalry between the partisans of Ali and those of the Ommiad and Abbaside Khalifs. It was among the followers of Ali that the doctrines of the union of God and man, the infusion of the Divinity in the imams, and the allegorical interpretation of religious ceremonies grew up. Daulat Shah in his Biography of the Persian Poets traces back mysticism as far as to Ali himself, though it is probable that he is imputing to the son-in-law of the Prophet beliefs which were of a somewhat later date. By force of circumstances the Alides were placed in opposition to the ruling Khalifs, and were obliged to find a justification for their attitude, and for submitting to the observances enjoined by those whom they refused to recognise as true representatives of Mahommad. They read the Koran by the light of a new creed, and interpreted it in a manner far different from that intended by its author. From the moment when the division between Shi’ite and Sunni sprang into being, the Shi’ites, or followers of Ali, made the eastern provinces of the Khalifate their stronghold. It is not unreasonable to suppose that a mysticism, in every way contrary to the true spirit of the Koran, made in those provinces nearest to India so rapid a progress, because, before the conquest of Persia by the Arabs, Indian mysticism had already struck root there. That is to say, that there had grown up, side by side with Zoroastrianism, a mysticism eminently congenial to the peculiar temper of the Persian mind—so congenial, indeed, that it was not stamped out by the Arab conquerors, but insinuated itself into the stern and practical creed which they forced upon a nation of dreamers and metaphysicians. The author of the Dabistan, a book written in the seventeenth century, containing the description of twelve different faiths, relates that there existed in Persia a sect belonging to the Yekaneh Bina, of those whose eyes are fixed upon One alone: “They say that the world has no external or tangible existence; all that is, is God, and beyond him there is nothing. The intelligences and the souls of men, the angels, the heavens, the stars, the elements, and the three kingdoms of nature exist only in the mind of God and have no existence beyond.” “If this Indian doctrine of Maya, or Illusion,” adds M. de Sacy, “had been transferred to Persia, there is every reason to believe that mysticism, grounded on the doctrine that all things are an emanation from God and that unto him they shall return, may be traced to the same source.”

My friend has fled! alas, my friend has fled, And left me nought but tears and pain behind! Like smoke above a flame caught by the wind, So rose she from my breast and forth she sped. Drunk with desire, I seized Love’s cup divine, But she that held it poured the bitter wine Of Separation into it and fled.

The breath of Dawn’s musk-strewing wind shall blow, The ancient world shall turn to youth again, And other wines from out Spring’s chalice flow; Wine-red, the judas-tree shall set before The pure white jessamine a brimming cup, And wind flowers lift their scarlet chalice up For the star-pale narcissus to adore.

Where are the tidings of union? that I may arise— Forth from the dust I will rise up to welcome thee! My soul, like a homing bird, yearning for Paradise, Shall arise and soar, from the snares of the world set free. When the voice of thy love shall call me to be thy slave, I shall rise to a greater far than the mastery Of life and the living, time and the mortal span: Pour down, oh Lord! from the clouds of thy guiding grace, The rain of a mercy that quickeneth on my grave, Before, like dust that the wind bears from place to place, I arise and flee beyond the knowledge of man.

This losing of the soul in God is only a return (and here we come near to such Platonic doctrines as those embodied in the Phædrus) to the conditions which existed before birth into the world. Just as in the Dialogue the immortal steed which is harnessed to the chariot of the soul, longs to return to the plain of birth, and to see again the true justice, beauty, and wisdom of which it has retained an imperfect recollection, so the soul of the Sufi longs to return to God, from whom it has been separated by the mortal veil of the body. But this reunion is pushed much further by the Eastern philosophers than by Plato; it implies, according to them, the complete annihilation of distinct personality, corresponding to the conditions, quite unlike those described by the Platonic Socrates, which they believe to have existed before birth. There is nothing which is not from God and a part of God. In himself he contains both being and not being; when he chooses he casts his reflection upon the void, and that reflection is the universe. There is a fine passage in Jami’s Yusuf and Zuleikha in which he sets forth this doctrine of the creation. “Thou art but the glass,” the poet concludes, “his is the face reflected in the mirror; nay, if thou lookest steadfastly, thou shalt see that he is the mirror also.” In a parable, Jami illustrates the universal presence of God, and the blind searching of man for that by which he is surrounded on every side. There was a frog which sat upon the shores of the ocean, and ceaselessly day and night he sang its praise. “As far as mine eyes can see,” he said, “I behold nothing but thy boundless surface.” Some fish swimming in the shallow water heard the frog’s song, and were filled with a desire to find that wonderful ocean of which he spoke, but go where they would they could not discover it. At last, in the course of their search, they fell into a fisherman’s net, and as soon as they were drawn out of the water they saw beneath them the ocean for which they had been seeking. With a leap they returned into it.

“Si le roi m’avait donné Paris sa grande ville, Et qu’il me fallût quitter L’amour de ma mie, Je dirais au roi Henri: Reprenez votre Paris, J’aime mieux ma mie, ô gué, J’aime mieux ma mie!”

Bring the cup in thine hand to the Judgment-seat; Thou shalt rise, oh Hafiz, to Heaven’s gate From the tavern where thou hast tarried late. And if thou hast worshipped wine, thou shalt meet The reward that the Faithful attain; If such thy life, then fear not thy fate, Thou shalt not have lived and worshipped in vain!

The days of Spring are here! the eglantine, The rose, the tulip from the dust have risen— And thou, why liest thou beneath the dust? Like the full clouds of Spring, these eyes of mine Shall scatter tears upon the grave thy prison, Till thou too from the earth thine head shalt thrust.

How far the Divan of Hafiz can be said to embody these doctrines, each reader must decide for himself, and each will probably arrive at a different conclusion. Between the judgment of Jami, that Hafiz was undoubtedly an eminent Sufi, and that of Von Hammer, who, playing upon his names, declared that the Sun of the Faith gave but an uncertain light, and the Interpreter of Secrets interpreted only the language of pleasure—between these two there is a wide field for differences of opinion. For my part, I cannot agree entirely either with Jami or with Von Hammer. Partly, perhaps, owing to the wise guidance of Sheikh Mahmud Attar, partly to a natural freedom of spirit, Hafiz seems to me to rise above the narrow views of his co-religionists, and to look upon the world from a wider standpoint. The asceticism of Sufi and orthodox he alike condemns: “The ascetic is the serpent of the age!” he cries. I think it was not only to curry favour with a king that he welcomed the accession of Shah Shudja, nor was it only to disarm the criticism of stricter Mohammadans that he described himself as a weary seeker after wisdom, praying God to show him some guiding light by which he might direct his steps. Of the two conclusions that are commonly drawn from the statement that to-morrow we die, Hafiz accepted neither unmodified by the other. “Eat and drink,” seemed to him a poor solution of the mysterious purpose of human life, and an unsatisfactory sign-post to happiness; “the abode of pleasure,” he says, “was never reached except through pain.” On the other hand, he was equally unwilling to despise the good things of this world. “The Garden of Paradise may be pleasant, but forget not the shade of the willow-tree and the fair margin of the fruitful field.” “Now, now while the rose is with us, sing her praise; now, while we are here to listen, Minstrel, strike the lute! for the burden of all thy songs has been that the present is all too short, and already the unknown future is upon us.” He, too, would have us cut down far reaching hope to the limit of our little day, though he cherished in his heart a more or less elusive conviction that he should find the fire of love burning still, and with a purer flame, behind the veil which his eyes could not pierce.

_Stanza 2._—The title which Hafiz gives to the Tavern-keeper is Pir-i-Maghan—literally, the Old Man of the Magians. The history of this title is an epitome of the history of Persian faiths. It indicated primarily the priest of the first of Persian religions, that of Zoroaster. When the Mahommadans invaded Persia, and the preachers of the Prophet supplanted the priests of Zoroaster, their title fell into disrepute, and was degraded so far that it came to mean only the keeper of a tavern or caravanserai. But in this sense it gradually regained the honourable place from which it had fallen; for the keepers of such places of resort were, for the most part, men well acquainted with the “ways of the road and the hostelry.” In their time they may themselves have served travellers upon their journey; they had heard and learnt much from the wayfarers who stopped at their gates, and they were able to guide others upon their journey, sending them forth refreshed and comforted in body. And here the Sufis took up the ancient name and used it to mean that wise old man who supplied weary travellers upon life’s road with the spiritual draught of Sufi doctrine which refreshes and comforts the soul.

From monkish cell and lying garb released, Oh heart of mine, Where is the Tavern fane, the Tavern priest, Where is the wine?

But thou that knowest God by heart, away! Wine-drunk, love-drunk, we inherit Paradise, His mercy is for sinners; hence and pray Where wine thy cheek red as red erghwan dyes, And leave the cell to faces sinister. Oh Khizr, whose happy feet bathed in life’s fount, Help one who toils afoot—the horsemen mount And hasten on their way; I scarce can stir.

Before the tavern door a Christian sang To sound of pipe and drum, what time the earth Awaited the white dawn, and gaily rang Upon mine ear those harbingers of mirth: “If the True Faith be such as thou dost say, Alas! my Hafiz, that this sweet To-day Should bring unknown To-morrow to the birth!”

This poem is said to have been written by Hafiz upon the death of his wife.

“One poor robe.” The Persian runs: “man dervish-i-yek kaba”—_i.e._ I, a poor man of one robe—_dervish_ signifying in its primary sense, it is hardly necessary to say, _poor_. I should think that the double meaning is significant. In its mystical sense, the poem describes how Hafiz found consolation in the ecstatic drunkenness of the Sufis, in the minstrel’s song, or divine message, which brought him a word from God; and when finally the last shred of his orthodoxy had been torn from him, when in his desperate struggle with existence he was forced to abandon even his dervish robe, Heaven mercifully showed him a safe refuge in the Sufi doctrines.

Worn out before his time with riotous living, Shah Shudja did his utmost to secure the welfare of his family before he died. He sent letters both to Timur and to Sultan Ahmed of Baghdad recommending to their protection his son Zein-el-Abeddin, his brothers, and his nephews. The curtain is drawn aside for a moment from the death-bed of the King, and an anecdote, such as Oriental historians love, reveals to us the fearless and terrible face. Hearing that his brother Ahmed was preparing to dispute the succession with Zein-el-Abeddin, he sent for him in order to persuade him to withdraw his claims. But when Ahmed entered the room where Shah Shudja lay sick to death, both brothers burst into tears, and Ahmed was so much overcome by emotion that he was obliged to withdraw. Thereupon Shah Shudja sent him a letter by the hand of a faithful servant. “The world,” he said, “is like unto the shadow of a cloud and a dream of the night; for the one has no resting-place, and when the dreamer awakens there remains to him but a vain memory of the other. I foresee much disturbance in Shiraz; Kerman is the home of our fathers. I have no complaint to lay at your door; but now that I am about to fare upon a long journey, if you were to become a sower of discord, not I alone would reproach you, but God also; and our enemies would rejoice. Go therefore to Kerman and renounce this unhappy city.” And Ahmed went.

POEMS FROM THE DIVAN OF HAFIZ

_Stanza 4._—Compare François Villon’s rough and powerful treatment of the same theme:—

The murmuring stream of Ruknabad, the breeze That blows from out Mosalla’s fair pleasaunce, Summon me back when I would seek heart’s ease, Travelling afar; what though Love’s countenance Be turned full harsh and sorrowful on me, I care not so that Time’s unfriendly glance Still from my Lady’s beauty turned be.

Every translator of Hafiz has tried his hand upon this song, which is one of the most famous in the Divan. It is only right to inform the reader that the original is of great beauty.

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From Oweis himself Hafiz is said to have received kindness, but he does not seem to have been satisfied with the Sultan’s conduct towards him: “From my heart,” he says, “I am the slave of Sultan Oweis, but he remembers not his servant.” The son of Oweis, Sultan Ahmed of Baghdad, whose cruelty caused his subjects to call in the aid of Timur against him, was very anxious to induce Hafiz to visit his court; but Hafiz, perhaps with prudence, declined the invitation, saying that he was content with dry bread eaten at home, and had no desire to taste the honey that pilgrims gather by the roadside. He sent to Ahmed a poem in which he loaded his name with extravagant praise. “On Persian soil,” he declared, “the bud of joy has never blown for me. How excellent is the Tigris of Baghdad and the perfumed wine! Oh wind of the dawn, bring unto me the dust from my friend’s threshold, that Hafiz may wash bright with it the eyes of his heart.”

Sleep on thine eyes, bright as narcissus flowers, Falls not in vain! And not in vain thy hair’s soft radiance showers— Ah, not in vain!

Dear is the rose—now, now her sweets proclaim, While yet the purple petals blush and blow; Hither adown the path of Spring she came, And by the path of Autumn she will go. Now, while we listen, Minstrel, tune thy lay! Thyself hast said: “The Present steals away; The Future comes, and bringing—what? Dost know?”

The date of his death is variously given as 1388, 1389, 1391, and 1394, but it seems unlikely that he should have been alive as late as 1394. 1389 is the year given in a couplet by an unknown author, which is inscribed upon his tomb: “If thou wouldst know when he sought a home in the dust of Mosalla, seek his date in the dust of Mosalla.” The letters of the Persian words Khak-i-Mosalla, dust of Mosalla, give the number 791, that is 1389 of our era. He lies in the garden of Mosalla outside Shiraz, a garden the praises of which he was never tired of singing, and on the banks of the Ruknabad, where he had so often rested under the shade of cypress-trees. When, some sixty years after the poet’s death, Sultan Baber conquered Shiraz, he erected a monument over the tomb of Hafiz. An oblong block of stone on which are carved two songs from the Divan, marks the grave. At the head of it is inscribed a sentence in Arabic: “God is the enduring, and all else passes away.” The garden contains the tombs of many devout Persians who have desired to rest in the sacred earth which holds the bones of the poet, and his prophecy that his grave should become a place of pilgrimage for all the drunkards of the world has been to a great extent fulfilled. A very ancient cypress, said to be of Hafiz’s own planting, stood for many hundreds of years at the head of his grave, and “cast its shadow o’er the dust of his desire.”

_Stanza 3._—Maghilan, a thorny shrub which grows on the deserts of Arabia near to Mecca. When the pilgrims see it they know that they have almost reached their goal, and forget the hardships of the journey and the barrenness of the wastes through which their road lies.

Abu Ishac had not steered his bark into quiet waters. In 1340 Shiraz was besieged and taken by a rival Atabeg, and the son of Mahmud Shah was obliged to content himself with Isfahan. But in the following year he returned, captured Shiraz by a stratagem, and again established himself as ruler over all Fars. The remaining years of his reign are chiefly occupied with military expeditions against Yezd, where Mahommad ibn Muzaffar and his sons were building up a formidable power. In 1352, determined to put an end to these attacks, Mahommad marched into Fars and laid siege to Shiraz. Abu Ishac, whose life was one of perpetual dissipation, redoubled his orgies in the face of danger. Uncertain of the fidelity of the people of Shiraz, he put to death all the inhabitants of two quarters of the town, and contemplated insuring himself of a third quarter in a similar manner. But these measures did not lead to the desired results. The chief of the threatened quarter got wind of the King’s design, and delivered up the keys of his gate to Shah Shudja, son of Mahommad ibn Muzaffar, and Abu Ishac was obliged to seek refuge a second time in Isfahan. Four years later, in 1357, he was given up to Mahommad, who sent him to Shiraz and, with a fine sense of dramatic fitness, had him beheaded in an open space before the ruins of Persepolis.

Yet pardon her, oh Heart, for poor wert thou, A humble dervish on the dusty way; Crowned with the crown of empire was her brow, And in the realms of beauty she bore sway. But all the joy that Hafiz’ hand might hold, Lay in the beads that morn and eve he told, Worn with God’s praise; and see! he holds it now.

The nightingale with drops of his heart’s blood Had nourished the red rose, then came a wind, And catching at the boughs in envious mood, A hundred thorns about his heart entwined. Like to the parrot crunching sugar, good Seemed the world to me who could not stay The wind of Death that swept my hopes away.

The son, whose future he had spent his last hours in assuring, was not to remain for long upon the throne bequeathed to him by his father. During his short reign, Zein-el-Abeddin was engaged in defending himself from the attacks of his cousin Mansur, but in 1388 he was obliged to flee before an enemy more terrible than any he had yet known. Timur, who for several years had been hovering upon the borders of Fars, overran Southern Persia and took Shiraz. Zein-el-Abeddin sought refuge with Mansur, who repaid his confidence by imprisoning and blinding him. It must have been in the year 1388 that the celebrated interview between Hafiz and Timur took place (see note to Poem V.), and not at the time of the second conquest of Shiraz in 1393. The confusion between the two dates has led several writers to doubt the truth of the story, since it is almost certain that the poet had died before 1393. Timur bestowed Shiraz upon Shah Yahya, uncle to Mansur, and some time governor of Yezd; but no sooner was the Tartar army called away by disturbances in the northern parts of the empire than Mansur overthrew his uncle and possessed himself of Shiraz. Hafiz did not live to see the end of the drama, but the end was not far off. In 1393 Timur advanced with 30,000 picked men against Mansur. The Muzaffaride, with only 3000 or 4000 men, twice charged into the heart of the Tartar force, and at one moment Timur’s own life was in danger. Mansur, who was himself fighting in the thickest of the battle, sent a message back to the wings of his army, ordering them to support his desperate charge; but they did not obey his command. He fell fighting beneath the sword of Shah Rukh Mirza, Timur’s son, leaving the conqueror to “march in triumph through Persepolis.” Courage was a quality in which the descendants of Mahommad ibn Muzaffar were not deficient, but among a race of soldiers Mansur seems to have been distinguished for his reckless bearing. He, too, like the other members of his family, was a patron of learning, and it is related that he used to distribute 200 tomans daily among the poor scholars of Shiraz. Both on account of their popularity and of their bravery, Timur saw that there would be no peace for him in Shiraz while one member of the house of Muzaffar remained alive; Mansur’s survivors were put to the sword.

A few miles from Peshawar, Darmsteter goes on to relate, there is a dried-up pond called the Talab i Djemshid, into which the King is said to have cast his magic cup. The head man of the village told the French traveller that a knife had been discovered there bearing this inscription: “This pond was dug by me, Djemshid, five hundred years before the Hejra.” “Elle n’a pas été retrouvée, la coupe de Djemshid,” adds Darmsteter, “non plus que la coupe du roi de Thulé, c’est pour ça qu’il n’y a plus parmi les hommes ni science, ni amour.”

Hafiz by this time had grown old. Youth had been very pleasant; not without a sigh the grey-haired man relinquished it. “Ah, why has my black hair turned white!” he laments, and tries to warm his old blood with the wine of former days. “Yesterday at dawn I came upon one or two glasses of wine—as sweet as the lip of the Cup-bearer they seemed to my palate. And then, my brain afire, I desired to return to my mistress, Youth, but between us a divorce had been pronounced.” And again: “Last night Hafiz strayed into the tavern, and it seemed to him that Youth, his mistress, had come back, and that love and madness had returned to his old head.” “Gieb meine Jugend mir zurück!” Other poets besides Hafiz have sung to the same tune. Whether or no he lived to witness the overthrow of the race that had sheltered him, he foresaw the troubles that were coming upon it and upon his beloved Shiraz. There is a short poem full of foreboding which is said to have been written after the entry of Timur: “What tumult I see beneath the moon’s orbit, every quarter of the earth is full of evil and wickedness! There is strife among our daughters, and among our mothers contention, and the father is evilly disposed towards his son. Only the foolish are drinking sherbet of rose-water and sugar; the wise are nourished upon their own heart’s blood. The Arabian horse is wounded beneath the saddle, and the ass wears a collar of gold about his neck. Master, take the counsel of Hafiz: ‘Go and do good!’ for I see that this maxim is worth more than a treasure-house of jewels.” In several verses he congratulates Mansur upon a victory and a fortunate return to Shiraz, which may perhaps refer to the re-establishment of the Muzaffaride line after Timur’s departure. “Give me the cup,” he says in one of these, “for the airs of youth blow through my old head, so glad am I to see the King’s face again.”

The modest and the merry shall be seen To boast their kinship with a single voice; There are no differences to choose between, Thou art but flattering thy soul with choice! Who knows the Curtain’s secret?... Heaven is mute! And yet with Him who holds the Curtain, e’en With Him, oh Braggart, thou would’st raise dispute!

The keynote of Sufiism is the union, the identification of God and man. It is a doctrine which lies at the root of all spiritual religions, but pushed too far it leads to pantheism, quietism, and eventually to nihilism. The highest good to which the Sufis can attain, is the annihilation of the actual—to forget that they have a separate existence, and to lose themselves in the Divinity as a drop of water is lost in the ocean.[4] In order to obtain this end they recommend ascetic living and solitude; but they do not carry asceticism to the absurd extremes enjoined by the Indian mystics, nor do they approve of artificial aids for the subduing of consciousness, such as opium, or hashish, or the wild physical exertions of the dancing dervishes. The drunkenness of the Sufi poets, say their interpreters, is nothing but an ecstatic frame of mind, in which the spirit is intoxicated with the contemplation of God just as the body is intoxicated with wine. According to the Dabistan there are four stages in the manifestation of the Divinity: in the first the mystic sees God in the form of a corporal being; in the second he sees him in the form of one of his attributes of action, as the Maker or the Preserver of the world; in the third he appears in the form of an attribute which exists in his very essence, as knowledge or life; in the fourth the mystic is no longer conscious of his own existence. To the last he can hope to attain but seldom.

‏دو بر چشمش نهد ديگر دو بر گوش يکي بر لب نهد گويد که خاموش‎

Night is with child, hast thou not heard men say? “Night is with child! what will she bring to birth?” I sit and ask the stars when thou’rt away. Oh come! and when the nightingale of mirth Pipes in the Spring-awakened garden ground, In Hafiz’ heart shall ring a sweeter sound, Diviner nightingales attune their lay.

Hafiz is rather the forerunner than the founder of this school of poets. It is equally unsatisfactory to give a completely mystical or a completely material interpretation to his songs. He wrote of the world as he found it. In his experience pleasure and religion were the two most important incentives to human action; he ignored neither the one nor the other. I am very conscious that my appreciation of the poet is that of the Western. Exactly on what grounds he is appreciated in the East it is difficult to determine, and what his compatriots make of his teaching it is perhaps impossible to understand. From our point of view, then, the sum of his philosophy seems to be, that though there is little of which we can be certain, that little must always be the object of all men’s desire; each of us will set out upon the search for it along a different road, and if none will find his road easy to follow, each may, if he be wise, discover compensations for his toil by the wayside. And for the rest, “Who knows the secret of the veil?” Like many a good and brave man before his time and since, I think he was content to “faintly trust the larger hope.”

From the protection of Abu Ishac, Hafiz passed into that of Shah Shudja, but the relations between the two men seem to have been somewhat strained. Shah Shudja may have distrusted the loyalty of one to whom Abu Ishac had been so good a patron; moreover, he nursed a professional jealousy of Hafiz, being himself a writer of occasional verse. The historian Khondamir tells of an interview which cannot have increased the goodwill of either interlocutor towards the other. Shah Shudja reproached Hafiz with the discursiveness of his songs. “In one and the same,” he said, “you write of wine, of Sufiism, and of the object of your affections. Now this is contrary to the practice of the eloquent.” “That which your Majesty has deigned to speak,” replied Hafiz (laying his tongue in his cheek, though Khondamir does not mention the fact), “is the essence of the truth; yet the poems of Hafiz enjoy a wide celebrity, whereas those of some other writers have not passed beyond the gates of Shiraz.” But an occasional bandying of sharp speeches, in which the King usually came off second best, did little harm to a friendship which was based upon a marked correspondence in tastes. “Since the hour,” declares Hafiz, “that the wine-cup received honour from Shah Shudja, Fortune has put the goblet of joy into the hand of all wine-drinkers”; and in several poems he welcomes Shah Shudja’s accession to the throne and the consequent removal of an edict against the drinking of wine: “The daughter of the grape has repented of her retirement; she went to the keeper of the peace (_i.e._ Shah Shudja) and received permission for her deeds. Forth came she from behind the curtain that she might tell her lovers that she has turned about.” Partly out of gratitude, partly with an eye to future favours, Hafiz proclaimed the glory of Shah Shudja, just as he had proclaimed that of the hapless Abu Ishac, and the King was not averse from such good wishes as these from the most famous poet of the age: “May the ball of the heavens be for ever in the crook of thy polo stick, and the whole world be a playing-ground unto thee. The fame of thy goodness has conquered the four quarters of the earth; may it be for all time a guardian unto thee!”

Wash white that travel-stained sad robe of thine! Where word and deed alike one colour bear, The grape’s fair purple garment shall outshine Thy many-coloured rags and tattered gear. Full easy seemed the sorrow of the sea Lightened by hope of gain—hope flew too fast! A hundred pearls were poor indemnity, Not worth the blast.

Give thanks for nights spent in good company, And take the gifts a tranquil mind may bring; No heart is dark when the kind moon doth shine, And grass-grown river-banks are fair to see. The Saki’s radiant eyes, God favouring, Are like a wine-cup brimming o’er with wine, And him my drunken sense goes out to greet, For e’en the pain he leaves behind is sweet.

In the language of religious mysticism, God is not only the Creator and Ruler of the world, he is also the Essentially Beautiful and the True Beloved. Love, of which the divine being is at once the source and the object, plays a large part in Sufi writings, a part which it is difficult, and sometimes unwise, to distinguish from an exaggerated expression of the human affections. Jami describes Pure Being, before it had been manifested in Creation, “singing of love unto itself in a wordless melody,”[11] and in the same strain Hafiz sings of “the Imperial Beauty which is for ever playing the game of love with itself.” Like the echo of a Greek voice falls Jami’s doctrine of human love: “Avert not thy face from an earthly beloved, since even this may serve to raise thee to the love of the True.” It is almost possible to read in the Persian poem the words of the wise Diotima to Socrates: “He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and has learnt to see the Beautiful in true order and succession, when he comes towards the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wonderful beauty, not growing or decaying, waxing or waning ... he who, under the influence of true love, rising upward from these things begins to see that beauty, is not far from the end.”

From out the street of So-and-So, Oh wind, bring perfumes sweet to me! For I am sick and pale with woe; Oh bring me rest from misery! The dust that lies before her door, Love’s long desired elixir, pour Upon this wasted heart of mine— Bring me a promise and a sign!

_Stanza 2._—These lines are exceedingly mysterious, as, indeed, is the whole poem. I have looked for an explanation of them in other editions of Hafiz, but have found little more than a bare translation of the Persian words. For the meaning of this stanza, see Introduction, p. 56.

When thou spokest ill of thy servant ’twas well— God pardon thee! for thy words were sweet; Not unwelcomed the bitterest answer fell From lips where the ruby and sugar lay. But, fair Love, let good counsel direct thy feet; Far dearer to youth than dear life itself Are the warnings of one grown wise—and grey!

Ah, swerve not from the path of righteousness Though the world lure thee! like a wrinkled crone, Hiding beneath her robe lasciviousness, She plunders them that pause and heed her moan. From Sinai Moses brings thee wealth untold; Bow not thine head before the calf of gold Like Samir, following after wickedness.

_Stanza 1._—When the conqueror Timur entered Shiraz it is related that he summoned Hafiz before him and said: “Of all my empire, Bokhara and Samarkand are the fairest jewels; how comes it that in thy song thou hast declared that thou would’st exchange them against the black mole on the cheek of thy mistress?” Hafiz replied: “It is because of such generosity that I am now as poor as thou seest.” The Emperor was not to be outdone in repartee: he sent the poet away a richer man by some hundreds of gold pieces.

My soul is on my lips ready to fly, But grief beats in my heart and will not cease, Because not once, not once before I die, Will her sweet lips give all my longing peace. My breath is narrowed down to one long sigh For a red mouth that burns my thoughts like fire; When will that mouth draw near and make reply To one whose life is straitened with desire?

Solomon, the type of human greatness, is the King whose mastery has left nothing behind. He harnessed the wind as a steed to his chariot, he spoke with the birds in their own tongue, and the wise and magnificent Assaf was his minister. Upon his seal was engraved the name of God which is unknown to men and before which the Jinn and the Angels must bow down. It was with this seal that he fastened up the bottles in which he imprisoned the Jinn—those bottles which the fishermen in the “Arabian Nights” pull up in their nets.

Hear the Tavern-keeper who counsels you: “With wine, with red wine your prayer carpet dye!” There was never a traveller like him but knew The ways of the road and the hostelry. Where shall I rest, when the still night through, Beyond thy gateway, oh Heart of my heart, The bells of the camels lament and cry: “Bind up thy burden again and depart!”

From this time onward the governors of the Persian provinces seem to have given a nominal allegiance now to the Sultan of Baghdad, now to the more distant Khalif. The position of Shiraz between Baghdad and Cairo must have resembled that of Venice between Rome and Constantinople, and, like Venice, she was obedient to neither lord.