Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/739

Presently we have,—

-“All day the rain Bathed the dark hyacinths in vain, The flood may pour from morn till night Nor wash the pretty Indians white.”

And so onward, through many a page. The following verse of Omar Chiam seems to belong to Hafiz :—

“Each spot where tulips prank their stateHas drunk the life-blood of the great;The violets yon fields which stainAre moles of beauties Time hath slain.”

As might this picture of the first days of Spring, from Enweri:—

“ O’er the garden water goes the wind aloneTo rasp and to polish the cheek of thewave;The fire is quenched on the dear hearth-stone,But it burns again on the tulips brave.”

Friendship is a favorite topic of the Eastern poets, and they have matched on this head the absoluteness of Montaigne. Hafiz says,—

“ Thou learnest no secret until thou knowest friendship; since to the unsound no heavenly knowledge enters.”

Ibn Jemin writes thus:—

“ 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.”

Dschami says,—

“ A friend is he, who, hunted as a foe,So much the kindlier shows him thanbefore;Throw stones at him, or ruder javelinsthrow,He builds with stone and steel a firmerfloor.”

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 loveWill this perishing mould,Were it made out of mire,Transmute into gold,”—

or, from another favorite legend of his chemistry,—

“ They say, through patieuce, chalkBecomes a ruby stone;Ah, yes, but by the true heart’s bloodThe 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 drawnMy darling’s lips about,The very Moon looks puzzled on,And hesitates in doubtIf the sweet curve that rounds thy mouthBe 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 czarsJewels 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 domeThan Mahmoud’s palace high,And thou, returning, find thy homeIn the apple of Love’s eye.”