Hafiz in London

by Justin H. McCarthy

Pleasant tales of love and lovers in my honey-laden verse?

While the vinepress with the life-blood of the purple clusters drips,

I forget how slowly, surely, day by day to darkness slips,

Heedless how beyond the gateway in the field the nations jar,

Hand on throat and hand on sabre in the trampled lanes of war.

Ah! ’tis better on this pleasant river bank to lie reclined,

While the ghosts of old affections fill the harem of my mind.

Think no more of love and lasses, Hafiz; you can scarcely hold

The Koran with trembling fingers. Hafiz, you are growing old.

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