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.

  “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.”