The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 06, April, 1858

He builds with stone and steel a firmer floor."

Of the amatory poetry of Hafiz we must be very sparing in our citations, though it forms the staple of the "Divan." He has run through the whole gamut of passion,—from the sacred, to the borders, and over the borders, of the profane. The same confusion of high and low, the celerity of flight and allusion which our colder muses forbid, is habitual to him. From the plain text,—

"The chemist of love
Will this perishing mould,
Were it made out of mire,
Transmute into gold,"—

or, from another favorite legend of his chemistry,—

"They say, through patience, chalk
Becomes a ruby stone;
Ah, yes, but by the true heart's blood
The chalk is crimson grown,"—

he proceeds to the celebration of his passion; and nothing in his religious or in his scientific traditions is too sacred or too remote to afford a token of his mistress. The Moon thought she knew her own orbit well enough; but when she saw the curve on Zuleika's cheek, she was at a loss:—

"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."

His ingenuity never sleeps:—

"Ah, could I hide me in my song,
To kiss thy lips from which it flows!"—

and plays in a thousand pretty courtesies:—

"Fair fall thy soft heart!
A good work wilt thou do?
Oh, pray for the dead
Whom thine eyelashes slew!"

And what a nest has he found for his bonny bird to take up her abode in!—

"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."

Nor shall Death snatch her from his pursuit:—

"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."

Then we have all degrees of passionate abandonment:—

"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."

And sometimes his love rises to a religious sentiment:—

"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
Bending with love benign,
And thou not less on Allah's eye
O fairest! turnest thine."

We add to these fragments of Hafiz a few specimens from other poets.

CHODSCHU KERMANI

THE EXILE

"In Farsistan the violet spreads
Its leaves to the rival sky,—
I ask, How 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.