"The secret that should not be blown
Not one of thy nation must know;
You may padlock the gate of a town,
But never the mouth of a foe."
"On earth's wide thoroughfares below
Two only men contented go:
Who knows what's right and what's forbid,
And he from whom is knowledge hid."
"On prince or bride no diamond stone
Half so gracious ever shone,
As the light of enterprise
Beaming from a young man's eyes."
"Two things thou shalt not long for, if thou love a life serene:
A woman for thy wife, though she were a crowned queen;
And, the second, borrowed money, though the smiling lender say
That he will not demand the debt until the Judgment Day."
"He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere."
"Color, taste, and smell, smarag-dus, sugar, and musk,—
Amber for the tongue, for the eye a picture rare,—
If you cut the fruit in slices, every slice a crescent fair,—
If you leave it whole, the full harvest-moon is there."
"I batter the wheel of heaven
When it rolls not rightly by;
I am not one of the powerless
Who fall thereon and die."
"See how the roses burn!
Bring wine to quench the fire!
Alas! the flames come up with us,—
We perish with desire."
"Alas! till now I had not known
My guide and Fortune's guide are one."
"The understanding's copper coin
Counts not with the gold of love."
"'Tis writ on Paradise's gate,
'Wo to the dupe that yields to Fate!'"
"The world is a bride superbly dressed;
Who weds her for dowry must pay his soul."
"Loose the knots of the heart; never think on thy fate:
No Euclid has yet disentangled that snarl."
"There resides in the grieving
A poison to kill;
Beware to go near them
'Tis pestilent still."
"I will be drunk and down with wine;
Treasures we find in a ruined house."
"To be wise the dull brain so earnestly throbs,
Bring bauds of wine for the stupid head."
"The Builder of heaven
Hath sundered the earth,
So that no footway
Leads out of it forth.
"On turnpikes of wonder
Wine leads the mind forth,
Straight, sidewise, and upward,
West, southward, and north.
"Stands the vault adamantine
Until the Doomsday;
The wine-cup shall ferry
Thee o'er it away."
"I am: what I am
My dust will be again."
"What lovelier forms things wear,
Now that the Shah comes back!"
"Thy foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down,
Poises Arcturus aloft morning and evening his spear."
"Mirza! where thy shadow falls,
Beauty sits and Music calls;
Where thy form and favor come,
All good creatures have their home."
"Not in their houses stand the stars,
But o'er the pinnacles of thine!"
"From thy worth and weight the stars gravitate,
And the equipoise of heaven is thy house's equipoise!"
"Take my heart in thy hand, beautiful boy of Schirax!
I would give for the mole on thy cheek Samarcand and Buchara!"—
"Out of the East, and out of the West, no man understands me;
Oh, the happier I, who confide to none but the wind!
This morning heard I how the lyre of the stars resounded,
'Sweeter tones have we heard from Hafiz!'"
"Fit for the Pleiads' azure chord
The songs I sung, the pearls I bored."
"I have no hoarded treasure,
Yet have I rich content;
The first from Allah to the Shah,
The last to Hafiz went."
"High heart, O Hafiz! though not thine
Fine gold and silver ore;
More worth to thee the gift of song,
And the clear insight more."
"Thou foolish Hafiz! say, do churls
Know the worth of Oman's pearls?
Give the gem which dims the moon
To the nobles, or to none."
"O Hafiz! speak not of thy need;
Are not these verses thine?
Then all the poets are agreed,
No man can less repine."
"Oft have I said, I say it once more,
I, a wanderer, do not stray from myself.
I am a kind of parrot; the mirror is holden to me;
What the Eternal says, I stammering say again.
Give me what you will; I eat thistles as roses,
And according to my food I grow and I give.
Scorn me not, but know I have the pearl,
And am only seeking one to receive it."
"My phœnix long ago secured
His nest in the sky-vault's cope;
In the body's cage immured,
He is weary of life's hope.
"Round and round this heap of ashes
Now flies the bird amain,
But in that odorous niche of heaven
Nestles the bird again.
"Once flies he upward, he will perch
On Tuba's golden bough;
His home is on that fruited arch
Which cools the blest below.
"If over this world of ours
His wings my phœnix spread,
How gracious falls on land and sea
The soul-refreshing shade!
"Either world inhabits he,
Sees oft below him planets roll;
His body is all of air compact,
Of Allah's love his soul."
"Come!—the palace of heaven rests on aëry pillars,—
Come, and bring me wine; our days are wind.
I declare myself the slave of that masculine soul
Which ties and alliance on earth once forever renounces.
Told I thee yester-morn how the Iris of
heaven Brought to me in my cup a gospel of joy?
O high-flying falcon! the Tree of Life is thy perch;
This nook of grief fits thee ill for a nest.
Hearken! they call to thee down from the ramparts of heaven;
I cannot divine what holds thee here in a net.
I, too, have a counsel for thee; oh, mark it and keep it,
Since I received the same from the Master above:
Seek not for faith or for truth in a world of light-minded girls;
A thousand suitors reckons this dangerousbride.
This jest [of the world], which tickles me, leave to my vagabond self.
Accept whatever befalls; uncover thy brow from thy locks;
Neither to me nor to thee was option imparted;
Neither endurance nor truth belongs to the laugh of the rose.
The loving nightingale mourns;—cause enow for mourning;—
Why envies the bird the streaming verses of Hafiz?
Know that a god bestowed on him eloquent speech."
"Bethink, poor heart, what bitter kind of jest
Mad Destiny this tender stripling played:
For a warm breast of ivory to his breast,
She laid a slab of marble on his head."
"By breath of beds of roses drawn,
I found the grove in the morning pure.
In the concert of the nightingales
My drunken brain to cure.
"With unrelated glance
I looked the rose in the eye;
The rose in the hour of gloaming
Flamed like a lamp hard-by.
"She was of her beauty proud,
And prouder of her youth,
The while unto her flaming heart
The bulbul gave his truth.
"The sweet narcissus closed
Its eye, with passion pressed;
The tulips out of envy burned
Moles in their scarlet breast.
"The lilies white prolonged
Their sworded tongue to the smell;
The clustering anemones
Their pretty secrets tell."
.mw-parser-output .wst-bar{text-decoration:line-through}.mw-parser-output .wst-bar-inner{color:transparent}———"All day the rain
Bathed the dark hyacinths in vain,
The flood may pour from morn till night
Nor wash the pretty Indians white."
"Each spot where tulips prank their state
Has drunk the life-blood of the great;
The violets yon fields which stain
Are moles of beauties Time hath slain."
"O'er the garden water goes the wind alone
To rasp and to polish the cheek of the wave;
The fire is quenched on the dear hearth-stone,
But it burns again on the tulips brave."
"Whilst I disdain the populace,
I find no peer in higher place.
Friend is a word of royal tone,
Friend is a poem all alone.
Wisdom is like the elephant,
Lofty and rare inhabitant:
He dwells in deserts or in courts;
With hucksters he has no resorts."
"A friend is he, who, hunted as a foe,
So much the kindlier shows him than before;
Throw stones at him, or ruder javelins throw,
He builds with stone and steel a firmer floor."
"The chemist of love
Will this perishing mould,
Were it made out of mire,
Transmute into gold,"—
"They say, through patience, chalk
Becomes a ruby stone;
Ah, yes, but by the true heart's blood
The chalk is crimson grown,"—
"And since round lines are drawn
My darling's lips about,
The very Moon looks puzzled on,
And hesitates in doubt
If the sweet curve that rounds thy mouth
Be not her true way to the South."
"Ah, could I hide me in my song,
To kiss thy lips from which it flows!"—
"Fair fall thy soft heart!
A good work wilt thou do?
Oh, pray for the dead
Whom thine eyelashes slew!"
"They strew in the path of kings and czars
Jewels and gems of price;
But for thy head I will pluck down stars,
And pave thy way with eyes.
"I have sought for thee a costlier dome
Than Mahmoud's palace high,
And thou, returning, find thy home
In the apple of Love's eye."
"If my darling should depart
And search the skies for prouder friends,
God forbid my angry heart
In other love should seek amends!
"When the blue horizon's hoop
Me a little pinches here,
On the instant I will die
And go find thee in the sphere."
"I know this perilous love-lane
No whither the traveller leads,
Yet my fancy the sweet scent of
Thy tangled tresses feeds.
"In the midnight of thy locks,
I renounce the day;
In the ring of thy rose-lips,
My heart forgets to pray."
"Plunge in yon angry waves,
Renouncing doubt and care;
The flowing of the seven broad seas
Shall never wet thy hair.
"Is Allah's face on thee
Pending with love benign,
And thou not less on Allah's eye
O fairest! turnest thine."
"In Farsistan the violet spreads
Its leaves to the rival sky,—
I ask, flow far is the Tigris flood,
And the vine that grows thereby?
"Except the amber morning wind,
Not one saluted me here;
There is no man in all Bagdad
To offer the exile cheer.
"I know that thou, O morning wind,
O'er Kerman's meadow blowest,
And thou, heart-warming nightingale,
My father's orchard knowest.
"Oh, why did partial Fortune
From that bright land banish me?
So long as I wait in Bagdad,
The Tigris is all I see.
"The merchant hath stuffs of price,
And gems from the sea-washed strand,
And princes offer me grace
To stay in the Syrian land;
"But what is gold for but for gifts?
And dark without love is the day;
And all that I see in Bagdad
Is the Tigris to float me away."
"While roses bloomed along the plain,
The nightingale to the falcon said,
'Why, of all birds, must thou be dumb?
With closed mouth thou utterest,
Though dying, no last word to man.
Yet sitt'st thou on the hand of princes,
And feedest on the grouse's breast,
Whilst I, who hundred thousand jewels
Squander in a single tone,
Lo! I feed myself with worms,
And my dwelling is the thorn.'—
The falcon answered, 'Be all ear:
I, experienced in affairs,
See fifty things, say never one;
But thee the people prizes not,
Who, doing nothing, say'st a thousand.
To me, appointed to the chase,
The king's hand gives the grouse's breast;
Whilst a chatterer like thee
Must gnaw worms in the thorn. Farewell!'"
"A painter in China once painted a hall;—
Such a web never hung on an emperor's wall;—
One half from his brush with rich colors did run,
The other he touched with a beam of the sun;
So that all which delighted the eye in one side,
The same, point for point, in the other replied.
"In thee, friend, that Tyrian chamber is found;
Thine the star-pointing roof, and the base on the ground:
Is one half depicted with colors less bright?
Beware that the counterpart blazes with light!"
"I Read on the porch of a palace bold
In a purple tablet letters cast,—
'A house, though a million winters old,
A house of earth comes down at last;
Then quarry thy stones from the sky, all, all,
And build the dome that shall not fall.'"
"The eternal Watcher, who doth wake
All night in the empty, earthen chest,
Will of thine arms a pillow make,
And a bolster of thy breast."
"Hear what, now loud, now low, the pining flute complains,
Without tongue, yellow-cheeked, full of winds that wail and sigh,
Saying, 'Sweetheart, the old mystery remains,
If I am I, thou thou, or thou art I.'"
"The bird-soul was ashamed;
Their body was quite annihilated;
They had cleansed themselves from the dust,
And were by the light ensouled.
What was, and was not,—the Past,—
Was wiped out from their breast.
The sun from near-by beamed
Directs light into their soul;
The resplendence of the Simorg beamed
As one back from all three.
They knew not, amazes, if they
Were either this or that.
They saw themselves all as Simorg,
Themselves in the eternal Simorg.
When to the Simorg up they looked,
They beheld him among themselves;
And when they looked on each other,
They saw them-selves in the Simorg.
A single look grouped the two parties,
The Simorg escaped, the Simorg vanished,
This is that, and that is this,
As the world has never heard.
So remained they, sunk in wonder,
Thoughtless in deepest thinking,
And each unconscious of themselves,
Speechless prayed they to the Highest
To open this secret,
And to unlock Thou and We.
Their union is answer without tongue,—
'The Highest is a sun-mirror;
Who counts to Him sees himself therein,
Body and soul, man and God body?
When you came to the mirror,
Three therein appeared to you,
And, had fifty of you came,
He had put you yourselves as many.
Him have none of in yet seen,
Ants see not the Pleiades,
Can the gnat grasp with his teeth
The body of the sleeping cat?
What you see is He not;
What you hear is He not.
The valleys which you traverse,
The nations which you redeem,
They lie under our treatment
And among our properties.
You as three birds are amazed,
Transient, breathless, confused:
Far over you am I raised,
Since I am in act Simorg.
Ye blot out my highest being,
That you may find yourselves on my throne;
Forever ye blot out yourselves,
As shadows in the sun. Farewell!'"
"Spin the ball! I reel, I burn,
Nor head from foot can I discern,
Nor my heart from love of mine,
Nor the wine-cup from the wine.
All my doing, all my leaving,
Reaches not to my perceiving,
Lost in whirling spheres I rove,
And know only that I love.
"I am seeker of the stone,
Living gem of Solomon;
From the shore of souls arrived,
In the sea of sense I dived;
But what is land, or what is wave,
To me who only jewels crave?
Love's the air-fed fire intense,
My heart is the frankincense;
As the rich aloes flames, I glow,
Yet the censer cannot know.
I'm all-knowing, yet unknowing;
Stand not, pause not, in my going.
"Ask not me, as Muftis can,
To recite the Alcoran;
Well I love the meaning sweet,—
I tread the book beneath my feet.
"Lo! the God's love blazes higher,
Till all difference expire.
What are Moslems? what are Giaours?
All are Love's, and all are ours.
I embrace the true believers,
But I reck not of deceivers.
Firm to heaven my bosom clings,
Heedless of inferior things;
Down on earth there, underfoot,
What men chatter know I not."