GAZEL
Tulip-cheeked ones over rosy field and plain stray all around;
Mead and garden cross they, looking wistful each way, all around.
These the lovers true of radiant faces, aye, but who the fair?
Lissom Cypress, thou it is whom eager seek they all around.
Band on band Woe’s legions camped before the City of the Heart,
There, together leagued, sat Sorrow, Pain, Strife, Dismay, all around.
From my weeping flows the river of my tears on every side,
Like an ocean ’tis again, a sea that casts spray all around.
Forth through all the Seven Climates have the words of Bāqī gone;
This refulgent verse recited shall be alway, all around.
Bāqī.
GAZEL
From thine own beauty’s radiant sun doth light flow;
How lustrously doth now the crystal glass show!
Thy friend’s the beaker, and the cup’s thy comrade;
Like to the dregs why dost thou me aside throw?
Hearts longing for thy beauty can resist not;
Hold, none can bear the dazzling vision’s bright glow!
United now the lover, and now parted;
This world is sometimes pleasure and sometimes woe.
Bound in the spell of thy locks’ chain is Bāqī,
Mad he, my Liege, and to the mad they grace show.
Bāqī.
GAZEL
The goblet as affliction’s Khusrev’s bright Keyānī crown doth shine;
And surely doth the wine-jar love’s King’s Khusrevānī hoard enshrine.
Whene’er the feast recalls Jemshīd, down from its eyes the red blood rolls;
The rosy-tinted wine its tears, the beakers its blood-weeping eyne.
At parting’s banquet should the cup, the heart, with blood brim o’er were’t strange?
A bowl that, to the fair we’ll drain, a goblet filled full high with wine.
O Moon, if by thy door one day the foe should sudden me o’ertake—
A woe by Heaven decreed, a fate to which I must myself resign!
The fume of beauty’s and of grace’s censer is thy cheek’s sweet mole,
The smoke thereof thy musky locks that spreading fragrant curl and twine;
Thy cheek rose-hued doth light its taper at the moon that shines most bright,
Its candlestick at grace’s feast is yonder collar fair of thine.
Of love and passion is the lustrous sheen of Bāqī’s verse the cause;
As Life’s Stream brightly this doth shine; but that, th’ Eternal Life Divine.
Bāqī.