“A friend is he, who, hunted as a foe,
So much the kindlier shows him than before;
Throw stones at him, or ruder javelins throw,
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.”—
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?
O, 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!—