Hafez
And, winning love’s alchemic power, transmute thyself to gold.
Hafez or Hāfiz (1325/26–1389/90) was a Persian mystic poet.
Quotes
[edit]- Boy, let yon liquid ruby flow,
And bid thy pensive heart be glad,
Whate’er the frowning zealots say:
Tell them, their Eden cannot show
A stream so clear as Rocnabad,
A bow’r so sweet as Mosellay.- "A Persian Song of Hafiz" (tr. William Jones, 1771)
Odes
[edit]- The dimple that thy chin contains has beauty in its round,
That never has been fathomed yet by myriad thoughts profound.- 143 (tr. Herman Bicknell, 1875)
- Sweet are the garden, the rose, and wine, but they would not be sweet without the company of my darling.
- (tr. Anon., 1875); quoted with a slight change in Ann Braybrooks (ed.) Love: A Book of Quotations (2012) p. 71
- What necessity for a sword to slay the lover, when a glance can deprive him of half his life!
- (tr. Anon., 1875); quoted with a slight change in Love: A Book of Quotations (2012) p. 71
- 'Tis writ on Paradise's gate,
"Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!"- In Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Persian Poetry", Letters and Social Aims (1876) p. 221
A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations (1911)
[edit]- Edited by Claud Field
- It is a crime to seek to raise but self,
Before all other men to praise but self,
The pupil of the eye a lesson gives,
Be all submitted to thy gaze but self.- p. 6 (Bicknell)
- What holds in peace this two-fold world, let this two-fold sentence show
Amity to every friend, courtesy to every foe.- p. 19, Ode, 6 (Bicknell)
- Learn meekness from the shell in ocean’s bed
And pearls on one who wounds thy head bestow.- p. 26 (Bicknell)
- I have shut my eye like a falcon to all the world
Since my (inward) eye is open to thy beauteous countenance.- p. 29 (Nicholson)
- Though many a rose in this garden is born
No mortal who culls one escapes from the thorn.- p. 29 (Bicknell)
- Thy curl is ever drawing the heart silently
Who hath power to speak (quarrel) with Thy heart-vanishing curl.- p. 32 (Nicholson)
- Opportunity flies, O brother,
As the cloud that quick doth pass;
Oh make use of it! life is precious
If we let it go,—alas!- p. 34 (Bicknell)
- Slight me not zealot, go thou hence ashamed
For naught is slight that has by God been framed.- p. 36 (Bicknell)
- Come! hear of those who have felt sorrow’s touch
Their words are few, but what they mean is much.- p. 39, Ode 282 (Bicknell)
- What serves thy armour ’gainst Fate’s arrows fierce?
What serves thy shield if Destiny transpierce?
Though steel and iron may thy ramparts plate
When comes the mandate, Death shall burst thy gate.- p. 44 (Bicknell)
- Like are, if void of purity, the k‘aba and the idle-fane
The house that has not chastity can in its walls no good contain.- p. 59 (Bicknell)
- The meshes of the net are strong but God withholds His grace from none,
Not otherwise could man prevail o’er Satan the stone-pelted one.- p. 61, Ode 417 (Bicknell)
- Wash from the dross of life thy hands as the Path’s men of old
And, winning love’s alchemic power, transmute thyself to gold.- p. 65 (Bicknell)
- How well said the aged farmer to his son,
O light of my eyes, thou wilt not reap save that which thou hast sown.- p. 67 (E. G. Browne)
- Daughters of turbulent mind awaking their mothers’ ire,
And sons who of froward mood wish ill to their sire, I see;
Sherbets of sugar and rose the world to the fool supplies,
But naught save his own heart’s blood the food of the wise I see;
Galled by the pack-saddle’s weight the Arab’s proud steed grows old,
Yet always the ass’s neck encircled with gold I see.- p. 70, Ode 442 (Bicknell)
- Breeze which at the morning blowest,
Fly, if faith and truth thou knowest,
Say, to my Beloved one turning;
He who with thy love is burning
Dying sighs where he is hidden
‘Life without thee is forbidden.’- p. 75 (Bicknell)
- Heart, should the flood of death life’s fabric sweep away,
Noah shall steer the ark o’er billows dark, despair not.
Though perilous the stage, though out of sight the goal,
Whithersoe’er we wend, there is an end, despair not.
If love evades our grasp, and rivals press their suit,
God, Lord of every change, surveys the range, despair not.- p. 77, Ode 284 (Bicknell)
- O partridge, bird of graceful gait, say whether wouldst thou shape thy way?
Be not so bold, for well we know how the religious cat can pray.- p. 78, Ode 122 (Bicknell)
- If by the Holy Spirit’s grace the gift again be won
The works which the Messias wrought by others may be done.- p. 84, Ode 123 (Bicknell)
- None see nor hear the malice of the sky
Each ear is deaf and blind is every eye
Oft those who moon and sun their pillow thought
Have later bricks and clay too gladly sought.- p. 89 (Bicknell)
- Aloud I say it and with heart of glee,
‘Love’s slave am I and from both worlds am free.’
Can I, the bird of sacred gardens tell,
Into this net of chance how first I fell?- p. 89, Ode 416 (Bicknell)
- Enjoy! ’twixt lip and mouth the bounds as nothing are
If humbled, care not; as the rose be gay,
Life’s honours which pass soon away, as nothing are.- p. 92, Ode 88 (Bicknell)
- Regard opportunity. For when uproar fell upon the world,
Hafiz struck at the cup and through grief took the corner of retirement.- p. 92, Odes (Clarke)
- Profit by companionship; this two-doored house (i.e., life) forsaken,
No pathway that can thither lead in future time is taken.- pp. 92-3, Odes (Bicknell)
- Reckon as plunder the path of profligacy. For this track
Like the path to the hidden treasure is not evident to every one.- p. 93 (Clarke)
- A Shah no other than thyself aspiring Hafiz craves;
Oh! were he in thy doorway’s dust one of thy common slaves.- p. 93 (Bicknell)
- If it is thy desire that the Beloved should not break the covenant,
Keep thy end of the thread that He may keep his end.- p. 93 (Nicholson)
- Be misery thy portion here, O Sage, or be it bliss
Refer it not to other men: ’tis God who orders this.- p. 98, Ode 208 (Bicknell)
- High birth may be a pearl of lustre, but let thine effort be
To rise by deeds. Distinct is greatness from birth and pedigree.- p. 99, Ode 104 (Bicknell)
- Spend well thy time; drink wine within the bower
For when a week is gone, the flower is not;
Snatch, snatch the hour that glads the heart so well
For the pearl always in the shell is not.- p. 100, Ode 204 (Bicknell)
Misattributed
[edit]- Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,"You owe me."Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.- From Daniel Ladinsky, The Gift: Poems by Hafiz (1999), p. 34. This is not a translation or interpretation of any poem by Hafez; it is an original poem by Ladinsky inspired by the spirit of Hafez in a dream. [1]
Quotes about Hafez
[edit]- And what though all the world should sink!
Hafis! with thee, alone with thee
Will I contend! joy, misery,
The portion of us twain shall be;
Like thee to love, like thee to drink,—
This be my pride,—this, life to me!- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, West–östlicher Divan, "Book of Hafis", 'The Unlimited' (1817), trans. Edgar Alfred Bowring
- Herrlich ist der Orient
Ubers Mittelmeer gedrungen;
Nur wer Hafiz liebt und kennt
Weiss was Calderon gesungen.- Goethe, West–östlicher Divan
Translations
[edit]- Sir William Jones, A Grammar of the Persian Language (1771) · Poems, Consisting Chiefly of Translations from the Asiatick Languages (1772)
- Herman Bicknell, Hafiz of Shiraz: Selections from his Poems, Translated from the Persian (1875)
- Anonymous, A Century of Ghazels, or, A Hundred Odes, Selected and Translated from the Diwan of Hafiz (1875)
