Poems from the Divan of Hafiz

_Stanza 1._—This poem is addressed to the Vizir of Sultan Oweis of Baghdad, Hadji Kawameddin, who founded a college for Hafiz in Shiraz. With true Persian exaggeration the poet must needs write to his patron much in the same terms in which a lover would write to his mistress; but his words, though they sound strangely to our ears, are nothing more than the Oriental way of saying, “Awake, my St. John!”

Sufiism apart, an undercurrent of mysticism runs through the poems which it is impossible to explain away. If we should attempt to ignore it, many of the odes would have no meaning at all, and most of them would lose a good half of their interest. Take, for instance, such verses as the following: “Heart and soul are fixed upon the desire of the Beloved: this at least _is_, for if not, heart and soul are nought. Fate is that which comes to the brink without the heart’s blood; if not, all thy striving after the Garden of Paradise is nought. Throw thyself not at the foot of its sacred trees hoping for their shade; dost thou not see, oh cypress, that even these are nought unto thee?” Hafiz is engaged in that terrible weighing of possibilities which every man who thinks must know: “Surely the soul which is filled with the desire of God must have some quality which shall be stronger than death? But if this were not so ... then indeed the soul itself is nought. Surely Fate is like an empty bowl standing upon the edge of the river of life? But if the bowl had been already filled with blood ... then all your striving to reach the Garden of Paradise shall avail you nothing. For do you not see, you who dare to acknowledge the truth, that you cannot battle against an appointed Destiny, and however grateful may be the shade of the holy trees, they could afford you no protection.” Nor can I believe that it is an earthly love of whom he speaks when he says, “Since the Beloved has veiled his face, how comes it that his lovers are reciting his beauties? They can only tell what they imagine to be there.” We are all engaged in telling each other—only what we imagine to be there.

_Stanza 4._—For the superstition concerning the origin of precious stones, see Note to Stanza 3 of Poem XXXIII.

Brave tales of singers and wine relate, The key to the Hidden ’twere vain to seek; No wisdom of ours has unlocked that gate, And locked to our wisdom it still shall be. But of Joseph’s beauty the lute shall speak; And the minstrel knows that Zuleika came forth, Love parting the curtains of modesty.

_Stanza 1._—Blue is the Persian colour of mourning. Hafiz compares the weeping lovers, clad in robes of grief, to a bed of violets, and as the violets bow their heads when the wind passes over them, so they bow down when their mistress passes by with flowing curls.

Past days of meeting, let the memory Of you be sweet! Where are those glances fled, and where for me Reproaches meet?

Better to drink red wine than tears, say I, While the lute sings; and if one bid thee cease, “God is the merciful!” thou shalt reply. To some, life brings but joy and endless ease; Ah, let them laugh although the jest be vain! For me the source of pleasure lay in pain, And weeping for my lady I found peace.

_Stanza 2._—According to Persian superstition, the smoke of burning rue has the power to avert the evil eye.

To-day may pass, to-morrow pass, before The turning wheel give me my heart’s desire; Heaven’s self shall change, and turn not evermore The universal wheel of Fate in ire. Oh Pilgrim nearing Mecca’s holy fane, The thorny maghilan wounds thee in vain, The desert blooms again—oh, weep no more!

Thy mouth the fountain where Life’s waters flow, A dimpled well of tears is set below, And death lies near to life thy lovers know, But know in vain!

Forget not when dear friend to friend returned, Forget not days gone by, forget them not! My mouth has tasted bitterness, and learned To drink the envenomed cup of mortal lot; Forget not when a sweeter draught was mine, Loud rose the songs of them that drank that wine— Forget them not!

And lips like to sugar, grace like a flower that sways, Are nought without kisses many and dalliance sweet; If thousands of voices sang not the rose’s praise, The joy of the cypress her opening bud to greet, Nor dancing of boughs nor blossoming rose were fair.

Shah Shudja died in the odour of sanctity. Ten holy men were with him continually, reading the Koran aloud from end to end each day. He left behind him a name renowned for courage and for liberality. He was a poet, after the fashion of kings, and from boyhood he could repeat the Koran by heart.

_Stanza 4._—It is a favourite Persian image to describe the hair of the beloved as entangling and entrapping the unfortunate lover. Her long locks are often compared to deadly snakes, and her curls to hooks which catch and tear her lover’s heart. One need go no further than the _Merchant of Venice_ to find the same imagery used by a Western poet: “Those crisped snaky golden locks,” and again, “A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men faster than gnats in cobwebs.”

Saki, thy kiss shall still my bitter cry! Lift up your grief-bowed heads, all ye that weep, The Healer brings joy’s wine-cup—oh, drink deep! Disciple of the Tavern-priest am I; The pious Sheikh may promise future bliss, He brings me where joy is.

And ever, since the time that Hafiz heard His Lady’s voice, as from a rocky hill Reverberates the softly spoken word, So echoes of desire his bosom fill.

A hundred dreams of Fancy’s garnered store Assail me—Father Adam went astray Tempted by one poor grain of corn! Wherefore Absolve and pardon him that turns away Though the soft breath of Truth reaches his ears, For two-and-seventy jangling creeds he hears, And loud-voiced Fable calls him ceaselessly.

Except thy road through affliction pass, None may reach the halting-station of mirth; God’s treaty: Am I not Lord of the earth? Man sealed with a sigh: Ah yes, alas! Nor with Is nor Is Not let thy mind contend; Rest assured all perfection of mortal birth In the great Is Not at the last shall end.

It is not often that a teacher and the favourite of princes enjoys unmixed popularity, especially when his criticisms of such as disagree with him are as harsh and as often repeated as are those of Hafiz; nor does he seem to have been an exception to the general rule. Moreover, his own conduct gave his enemies sufficient grounds for complaint. His biographers, as biographers will, take a rosy view of his life. Daulat Shah, for instance, states that “he turned always to the company of dervishes and of wise men, and sometimes he attained also to the society of princes; a friend of persons of eminent virtue and perfection, and of noble youths.” But such accounts as these are not entirely borne out by other traditions, and his poems do not seem to the unbiased reader to be the works of a man of ascetic temperament. With all due deference to Daulat Shah, I would submit that Abu Ishac, Shah Shudja, and Shah Mansur were none of them persons of eminent virtue; indeed, it is difficult to imagine that a friend and panegyrist of theirs could have renounced all the joys of life. His enemies went so far as to accuse him of heresy and even of atheism, and so strong was popular feeling against him that, on his death, it was debated whether his body might be given the rites of burial. The question was only settled by consulting his poems, which, on being taken at haphazard, opened upon the following verse: “Fear not to follow with pious feet the corpse of Hafiz, for though he was drowned in the ocean of sin, he may find a place in paradise.” It is a fortunate age which will allow a man’s writings to stand his doubtful reputation in such good stead.

_Stanza 1._—Sir Henry Layard gives the following account of a party of dervishes with whom he travelled, from which it would appear that the contempt of Hafiz for the dervish habit was not wholly uncalled for: “They were a picturesque and motley crew. One or two of them were what the Persians call _luti_, young men with well-dyed curls, long garments, and conical caps embroidered in many colours—debauched and dissolute fellows, who, under the guise of poverty, and affecting abstinence and piety, were given to every manner of vice. Others were half-naked savages, with hair hanging down their backs, and the skins of gazelles on their shoulders—barefooted, dirty, and covered with vermin. They carried heavy iron maces, and seemed more disposed to exact than to ask for charity. As they went along they shouted ‘Yah Allah! yah Muhammad! yah Ali!’ They all had slung from their shoulders the carved cocoa-nut shell, which is indispensable to the dervish, and serves for carrying food and for drinking purposes. Round their necks they wore charms and amulets, with beads and coloured strings and tassels.” He goes on to say: “Most Persian dervishes, although they have great pretensions to sanctity, by which they impose upon the people, high and low, are without any religion. They are, however, credited with working miracles, and with being able to give efficacious charms.... Although these dervishes are rank impostors, and generally arrant scoundrels, they maintain their influence over the ignorant and superstitious Persians of all classes, who greatly fear, and do not dare to offend them. Consequently no one ventures to refuse them admission into their houses, and even into the women’s apartments, where those who go stark-naked, and are looked upon as specially holy and protected by Allah and Ali, can enter with impunity. Sometimes they will demand a specific sum of money from a rich man, and if he refuses to pay it, will establish themselves in the gateway or porch of his dwelling, or outside close to it, and enclosing a small plot of ground, sow wheat or plant flowers, and remain until what they ask for is paid them, hooting hideously day and night, calling upon Mohammad, Ali, and the Imams, or blowing on a buffalo’s horn so as to disturb the whole neighbourhood. The owner and inmates of the house are helpless. They do not dare to remove by force the holy men.”—_Early Adventures._

POEMS FROM THE DIVAN OF HAFIZ

Lay not reproach at the drunkard’s door Oh Fanatic, thou that art pure of soul; Not thine on the page of life to enrol The faults of others! Or less or more I have swerved from my path—keep thou to thine own! For every man when he reaches the goal Shall reap the harvest his hands have sown.

Hafiz, why art thou ever telling o’er The tale of absence and of sorrow’s night? Knowest thou not that parting goes before All meeting, and from darkness comes the light!

Each curling lock of thy luxuriant hair Breaks into barbèd hooks to catch my heart, My broken heart is wounded everywhere With countless wounds from which the red drops start. Yet when sad lovers meet and tell their sighs, Not without praise shall Hafiz’ name be said, Not without tears, in those pale companies Where joy has been forgot and hope has fled.

After his death, Shah Shudja reigned in Shiraz, and his brother Shah Yahya in Yezd. Shah Shudja was a man of like energy with his father, but it was an energy directed into different channels; the stern religious ardour of the elder man was changed into a spirit of frenzied dissipation in the younger. Whenever he was not engaged in conducting expeditions against his brothers and nephews, he was taking part in the wildest orgies in Shiraz. He was scarcely less cruel than Mahommad. In a fit of drunkenness he ordered one of his own sons to be blinded, and though, at the instance of his vizir, he repented and sent a second messenger hot foot after the first, it was already too late to save the boy. Before Shah Shudja’s death the knell of the house of Muzaffar had sounded—Tamberlain and his Tartar hordes had advanced into Northern Persia. In 1382 Shah Shudja sent a propitiatory embassy to him with gifts—jewels and silks, horses, a scarlet daïs, a royal standard, and a Chinese umbrella; and Timur in return sent the King a robe of honour and a belt studded with jewels.

Although His thrall shall miss the road and err, ’Tis but to teach him wisdom through distress, Else Pardon and Compassionate Mercy were But empty syllables and meaningless. The Zealot thirsts for draughts of Kausar’s wine, And Hafiz doth an earthly cup prefer— But what, between the two, is God’s design?

What though I, too, have tasted the salt of my tears, Though I, too, have burnt in the fires of grief, Shall I cry aloud to unheeding ears? Mourn and be silent! nought brings relief. Thou, Hafiz, art praised for the songs thou hast wrought, But bearing a stained or an honoured name, The lovers of wine shall make light of thy fame— All things are nought!

In the clear dawn, before the east was red, Before the rose had torn her veil in two, A nightingale through Hafiz’ garden flew, Stayed but to fill its song with tears, and fled.

A horse and robe is the Eastern gift of honour. Lane in one of his notes to the “Arabian Nights” quotes a significant story concerning these gifts: “A person chancing to look at a register kept by one of the officers of Harun al Rashid, saw in it the following entry: ‘400,000 pieces of gold, the price of a dress of honour for Jafar ibn Yahya, the Vizir.’ A few days after he saw beneath this written: ‘Ten kerits, the price of naphtha and reeds for burning the body of Jafar ibn Yahya.’ (The kerit of Baghdad was worth a twentieth part of a gold piece.)

What is wrought in the forge of the living and life— All things are nought! Ho! fill me the bowl, For nought is the gear of the world and the strife! One passion has quickened the heart and the soul, The Beloved’s presence alone they have sought— Love at least exists; yet if Love were not, Heart and soul would sink to the common lot— All things are nought!

Hafiz, the secret of God’s dread task No man knoweth, in youth or prime Or in wisest age; of whom would’st thou ask: What has befallen the wheels of Time?

This ode is inscribed upon the tomb of Hafiz.

None now sayeth: “A love was mine, Loyal and wise, to dispel my care.” None remembers love’s right divine; What has befallen all lovers fair? In the midst of the field, to the players’ feet, The ball of God’s favour and mercy came, But none has leapt forth to renew the game— What has befallen the horsemen fleet?

_Stanza 4._—Samir. Al Samiri belonged, say the Mahommadans, to a certain tribe among the Jews called the Samaritans, whence his name. In this the Mahommadans strangely betray their ignorance of history, for the Samaritans were not formed into a people, nor did they bear that name, until many ages later. Some say that he was a proselyte, but a hypocritical one, and originally of Kerman or some other country. “His real name was Musa ibn Dhafar. He was a magician and an alchemist. Pharaoh employed him as a rival to Moses when the latter worked miracles with his hand and his staff, but Al Samiri was unable to show wonders as great as those performed by Moses. It was he and not Aaron, according to Mahommadan tradition, who cast the golden calf. The calf was made of the ornaments of gold and silver and other materials which the Israelites had borrowed from the Egyptians; for Aaron, who commanded in his brother’s absence, having ordered Al Samiri to collect those ornaments from the people, who carried on a wicked commerce with them, and to keep them together till the return of Moses, Al Samiri, understanding the founder’s art, put them all together into a furnace, to melt them down into one mass, which came out in the form of a calf. The Israelites, accustomed to the Egyptian idolatry, paying a religious worship to this image, Al Samiri went further, and took some dust from the footsteps of the horse of the angel Gabriel, who marched at the head of the people, and threw it into the mouth of the calf, which immediately began to low, and became animated; for such was the virtue of that dust.” (Sale, Notes to second and twenty-second chapters of the Koran.) Al Samiri is mentioned by name in the twenty-second chapter of the Koran: “Al Samiri led them astray.”

“His mistress, Truth, shall mount her black steed, the veil of allegory drawn across her brow.

“Hafiz, thy praise alone my comrades sing; Hasten to us, thou that art sorrowing! A robe of honour and a harnessed steed I send to thee.”

It is a curious coincidence (if it be nothing more) that at the time when mystical poetry was taking a recognised place in the literature of Persia and of India, it was also springing into existence in the West. The songs of the Troubadours were avowedly intended to convey a meaning deeper than that which lay upon the surface; the Romance of the Rose comes nearer than any other Western allegory to a full-fledged mysticism worthy of an Oriental poet. St. Francis addresses his Redeemer in terms not very different from those used by Hafiz to express his longing after divine wisdom, and the Beatrice, perhaps of the _Vita Nuova_, certainly of the Divine Comedy, is no less intangible than the allegorical mistress (when she is allegorical) of the Persian.

_Stanza 4._—He means either _facilis descensus Averni_, or, more probably, that a great number of those upon whom the orthodox look askance will be found to have equal claim to reward, since the distinction between Sufi and orthodox is in fact nothing.

Between the ambush of mine eyes And my heart’s fort there’s enmity— Her eye-brow’s bow, the dart that flies, Beneath her lashes, bring to me! Sorrow and absence, glances cold, Before my time have made me old; A wine-cup from the hand of Youth Bring me for pity and for ruth!

The margin of a stream, the willow’s shade, A mind inclined to song, a mistress sweet, A Cup-bearer whose cheek outshines the rose, A friend upon whose heart thy heart is laid: Oh Happy-starred! let not thine hours fleet Unvalued; may each minute as it goes Lay tribute of enjoyment at thy feet, That thou may’st live and know thy life is sweet.

Hafiz looked upon the prophet Al Khizr as one of his special guardians. About four Persian miles from Shiraz there is a spot called Pir-i-Sabz, the Old Green Man; whosoever should pass forty nights in it without sleeping, on the fortieth night Al Khizr would appear to him and confer upon him the immortal gift of song. Hafiz in his youth fell in love with a beautiful girl of Shiraz called Shakh-i-Nahat, and in order to win her heart he determined to meet Al Khizr and receive from him the art of poetry. For thirty-nine mornings he walked beneath the windows of Shakh-i-Nahat, at noon he ate, then he slept, and at night he kept watch, undismayed by the terrible apparition of a fierce lion which was his nightly companion. At length, on the fortieth morning, Shakh-i-Nahat called him into her house and told him that she was ready to become his wife, for she preferred a man of genius to the son of a king. She would have kept him with her, but Hafiz, though he had gained his original end, was now filled with desire to become a poet, and insisted upon keeping his fortieth vigil. That night an old man dressed in green garments came to him and brought him a cup of the water of immortality.

If for wine the Cup-bearer pour forth my blood, As the milk from a mother’s bosom flows, At his word let my heart yield its crimson flood. But, Hafiz, Hafiz! thou art of those For ever fearing lest absence be near; For the days when thou held’st the Beloved close, Why rise not thy thanks so that all may hear?

_Verse 3._—The Persians describe the dimple in the chin of their mistress as a dangerous well filled with her lover’s tears, into which, when he approaches her mouth, he may fall and be drowned.

No tainted eye shall gaze upon her face, No glass but that of an unsullied heart Shall dare reflect my Lady’s perfect grace. Though like to snakes that from the herbage start, Thy curling locks have wounded me full sore, Thy red lips hold the power of the bezoar— Ah, touch and heal me where I lie apart!

“C’est du Molière renversé,” says Darmsteter of these lines, and quotes:—

Hafiz and Dante, it is interesting to note, were almost contemporaries. At the time when Dante was climbing Can Grande’s weary stair, Hafiz was opening his eyes upon a yet more tumultuous world. Both were driven by the confusion around them to look for some solid platform on which to build a theory of existence, but Dante found it in that strenuous personal faith which is for ever impossible to minds of the temper of that of Hafiz. Moreover, the mysticism of Dante stands with its feet planted firmly upon the earth: man and his deeds might be fleeting, but they laid so strong a hold upon the poet’s imagination that he welded them into a stepping-stone to that which shall not pass away. His own life was spent in a ceaseless political activity; for all his visionary journeys through heaven and hell, Dante lived as keenly as any of his contemporaries. The fire still burns in the dead heart; the fierce and tender spirit, roused by turns to merciless condemnation and exquisite pity, still glows with a flame removed from mortal conditions, which the chill of death cannot extinguish as long as men shall read and understand. Through him his age lives. The people whom he had met, those of whom he had only heard, the smallest incidents of his time, the sum of all that it knew and of all that it believed, are struck out for ever, hard and sharp, in his vivid lines; and the fortunes of Florence, of one little town in a little corner of the world, loom to us, under the poet’s influence, as big and as tragic as they seemed to that most ardent of citizens. To Hafiz, on the contrary, modern instances have no value; contemporary history is too small an episode to occupy his thoughts. During his lifetime the city that he loved, perhaps as dearly as Dante loved Florence, was besieged and taken five or six times; it changed hands even more often. It was drenched with blood by one conqueror, filled with revelry by a second, and subjected to the hard rule of asceticism by a third. One after another Hafiz saw kings and princes rise into power and vanish “like snow upon the desert’s dusty face.” Pitiful tragedies, great rejoicings, the fall of kingdoms, and the clash of battle—all these he must have seen and heard. But what echo of them is there in his poems? Almost none. An occasional allusion which learned commentators refer to some political event; an exaggerated effusion in praise first of one king, then of another; the celebration of such and such a victory and of the prowess of such and such a royal general—just what any self-respecting court poet would feel it incumbent upon himself to write; and no more.

Heaven’s garden future treasures may yield— Ah, make the most of earth’s treasury! The flickering shade of the willow-tree, And the grass-grown lip of the fruitful field. Trust not in deeds—the Eternal Day Shall reveal the Creator’s sentence on thee; But till then, what His finger has writ, who can say.

_Stanza 3._—The allusion is to the expulsion of Adam from the Garden of Eden.

In Turkestan there was formerly an institution called the Feast of Plunder. When the pay-day of the soldiers came round, dishes of rice and great quantities of cooked food were prepared and set out on the ground. The soldiers then rode up, armed as if for battle, and carried off the food with mimic violence. Thus they made reparation to their conscience for accepting a pay lawfully earned, and reminded themselves that rapine was their true profession.

Beautiful and spiritual as some of these doctrines are, they can hardly be said to form an adequate guide to conduct. The Sufis, however, are regarded in the East as men leading a virtuous and pure life. Even the etymology of their name points to the same conclusion: Sufi comes from an Arabic word signifying wool, and indicates that they were accustomed to clothe themselves in simple woollen garments. They occupy in the East much the same position that Madame Guyon and the Jansenists occupied in the West, and they teach the same doctrine of quietism, which, while it lends to its followers the virtues of exaggerated submission, saps the root of a faith that is manifested in works. So far as the Sufis are striving earnestly after union with God, they are saved from the logical consequences of their doctrines: “Their ear is strained to catch the sounds of the lute, their eyes are fixed upon the cup, their bosoms are filled with the desire of this world and of the world to come.”[13] And in the same spirit Hafiz sings: “Though the wind of discord shake the two worlds, mine eyes are fixed upon the road from whence cometh my Friend.” The idealism of the Sufis led them to deny the morality of all actions, but they restricted the consequences of their principles to the adepts who had attained to perfect union with God, and even for them the moments of ecstasy are few. Most Sufis are good and religious men, holding it their duty to conform outwardly, and no discredit to use all artifices to conceal from the orthodox the beliefs which they cherish in their heart, but holding also that the practice of the Mahommadan religion, to the rites of which they have attached symbolic meanings, is the only way to the perfection to which they aspire. Nevertheless, Count Gobineau is of opinion that quietism is the great curse of the East. “The dominant characteristic of Sufiism,” he says, “is to unite by a weak chain of doctrine, ideas the significance of which is very different, so different that there is in reality but one connecting link between them, and that link is a quietism adapted to them all, a passive disposition of spirit which surrounds with a nimbus of inert sentiment all conceptions of God, of man, and of the universe. It is this quietism, and not Islam, which is the running sore of all Oriental countries.”