Poems from the Divan of Hafiz · 28 of 77

Ode XXVI (I)

XXVI THE secret draught of wine and love repressed Are joys foundationless—then come whate’er May come, slave to the grape I stand confessed! Unloose, oh friend, the knot of thy heart's care, Despite the warning that the Heavens reveal! For all his thought, never astronomer That loosed the knot of Fate those Heavens conceal!

Not all the changes that thy days unfold Shall rouse thy wonder; Time's revolving sphere Over a thousand lives like thine has rolled. That cup within thy fingers, dost not hear The voices of dead kings speak through the clay Kobad, Bahman, Djemshid, their dust is here, "Gently upon me set thy lips!" they say.

What man can tell where Kaus and Kai have gone? Who knows where even now the restless wind Scatters the dust of Djem's imperial throne? And where the tulip, following close behind The feet of Spring, her scarlet chalice rears, There Ferhad for the love of Shirin pined, Dyeing the desert red with his heart's tears.

Insight

'Where the tulip, following close behind the feet of Spring, her scarlet chalice rears, there Ferhad for the love of Shirin pined.' Ferhad and Shirin are the lovers of Nizami's twelfth-century romance Khusraw u Shirin. Ferhad, the stonemason, was set to cut a road through Mount Bisutun for the love of Queen Shirin and was tricked into killing himself with the false news of her death. The tulip blooming red on the slopes is, in the Persian convention, the blood of Ferhad still rising through the soil. Hafiz uses these legendary lovers (Ferhad-Shirin, Layla-Majnun, Yusuf-Zulaykha) as human types of the Sufi seeker who dies for love of the Beloved. The romance and the mystical doctrine are the same shape.Nizami, Khusraw u Shirin (c. 1180); on the Ferhad-tulip association, A. Bausani, Storia della letteratura persiana (1968).

Bring, bring the cup! drink we while yet we may To our soul's ruin the forbidden draught Perhaps a treasure-trove is hid away Among those ruins where the wine has laughed!— Perhaps the tulip knows the fickleness Of Fortune's smile, for on her stalk's green shaft She bears a wine-cup through the wilderness.

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.

Like Hafiz, drain the goblet cheerfully While minstrels touch the lute and sweetly sing, For all that makes thy heart rejoice in thee Hangs of Life's single, slender, silken string.