FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ.
Now and then will never agree.
Whoso has a banquet dressed
Is with glad mind satisfied,
'Scaping from the snares of Dews.
Alas for youth! 'tis gone in wind:
Happy he who spent it well!
Give me wine, that I o'erleap
Both worlds at a single spring.
Stole, at dawn, from glowing spheres
Call of Houris to mine ear :-
"O happy bird! delicious soul!
Spread thy pinion, break the cage;
Sit on the roof of seven domes,
Where the spirit takes repose."
In the time of Bisurdschimihr,
Menutscheher's beauty shined.
On the beaker of Nushirvan,
Wrote they once in elder times,
Hear the counsel; learn from us
Sample of the course of things:
Earth-it is a place of sorrow,
Scanty joys are here below;
Who has nothing has no sorrow."
Where is Jam, and where his cup?
Solomon and his mirror, where?
Which of the wise masters knows
What time Kauss and Jam existed?
When those heroes left this world,
Left they nothing but their names.
Bind thy heart not to the earth;
When thou goest, come not back;
Fools squander on the world their hearts,
League with it is feud with heaven:
Never gives it what thou wishest.
A cup of wine imparts the sight
Of the five heaven-domes with nine steps:
Whoso can himself renounce
Without support shall walk thereon ;—
Who discreet is, is not wise.
Give me, boy, the Kaisar cup,
Which rejoices heart and soul.
Under type of wine and cup
Signify we purest love.
Youth like lightning disappears;
Life goes by us as the wind.
Leave the dwelling with six doors,
And the serpent with nine heads;
Life and silver spend thou freely
If thou honourest the soul.
Haste into the other life;
All is naught save God alone.
Give me, boy, this toy of Dæmons;
When the cup of Jam was lost,
Him availed the world no more.
Fetch the wineglass made of ice;
Wake the torpid heart with wine.
Every clod of loam below us
Is a skull of Alexander;
Oceans are the blood of princes:
Desert sands the dust of beauties.
More than one Darius was there
Who the whole world overcame ;
But, since these gave up the ghost,
Thinkest thou they never were ?
Boy, go from me to the Shah;
Say to him, " Shah, crowned as Jam,
Win thou first the poor man's heart,
Then the glass; so know the world.
Empty sorrows from the earth
Canst thou drive away with wine.
Now in thy throne's recent beauty,
In the flowing tide of power,
Moon of fortune, mighty king,
Whose tiara sheddeth lustre,
Peace secure to fish and fowl,
Heart and eye-sparkle to saints;-
Shoreless is the sea of praise;
I content me with a prayer
From Nisami's poet-works,
Fairest ornament of speech,
Here a verse will I recite,
Verse as beautiful as pearls:
'More kingdoms wait thy diadem
Than are known to thee by name;
Thee may sovran Destiny
Giant a victory every morn.'"
FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ.
F Paradise, O hermit wise,
Let us renounce the thought;
Of old therein our names of sin
Allah recorded not.
Who dear to God on earthly sod
No rice or barley plants,
The same is glad that life is had,
Though corn he wants.
O just fakir, with brow austere,
Forbid me not the vine;
On the first day, poor Hafiz' clay
Was kneaded up with wine.
Thy mind the mosque and cool kiosk,
Spare fast and orisons;
Mine me allows the drinking-house,
And sweet chase of the nuns.
He is no dervise, Heaven slights his service.
There in the banquet to pawn his blanket For Schiraz' juice.
Who his friend's skirt or hem of his shirt
Shall spare to pledge,
To him Eden's bliss and Angel's kiss
Shall want their edge.
Up! Hafiz, grace from high God's face
Beams on thee pure;
Shy thou not hell, and trust thou well,
Heaven is secure.
Y fate, not option, frugal Nature gave One scent to hyson and to wall-flower, One sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls, One aspect to the desert and the lake.
It was her stern necessity: all things
Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower,
Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character
Deceive us, seeming to be many things,
And are but one. Beheld far off, they part
As God and devil; bring them to the mind,
They dull its edge with their monotony.
To know one element, explore another,
And in the second reappears the first.
The specious panorama of a year
But multiplies the image of a day,-
A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame;
And universal Nature, through her vast
And crowded hole, an infinite paroquet,
Repeats one note.
From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice,
Saying, "This be thy portion, child; this chalice,
Less than a lily's, thou shalt daily draw
From my great arteries, nor less, nor more."
All substances the cunning chemist Time
Melts down into that liquor of my life,-
Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty, and disgust.
And whether I am angry or content,
Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt,
All he distils into sidereal wine
And brims my little cup; heedless, alas !
Of all he sheds how little it will hold,
How much runs over on the desert sands.
If a new Muse draw me with splendid ray,
And I uplift myself into its heaven,
The needs of the first sight absorb my blood,
And all the following hours of the day
Drag a ridiculous age.
To-day, when friends approach, and every hour
Brings book, or star-bright scroll of genius,
The little cup will hold not a bead more,
And all the costly liquor runs to waste;
Nor gives the jealous lord one diamond drop
So to be husbanded for poorer days.
Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?
Why need I galleries, when a pupil's draught
After the master's sketch fills and o'erfills
My apprehension? Why seek Italy,
Who cannot circumnavigate the sea
Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn
The nearest matters for a thousand days?
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