"Mirza! where thy shadow falls,
Beauty sits and Music calls;
Where thy form and favor come,
All good creatures have their home."
Here are a couple of stately compliments to his Shah, from the kindred
genius of Enweri:--
"Not in their houses stand the stars,
But o'er the pinnacles of thine!"
"From thy worth and weight the stars
gravitate,
And the equipoise of heaven is thy house's
equipoise!"
It is told of Hafiz, that, when he had written a compliment to a
handsome youth,--
"Take my heart in thy hand, O beautiful boy
of Schiraz!
I would give for the mole on thy cheek Samarcand
and Buchara!"--
the verses came to the ears of Timour in his palace. Timour taxed Hafiz
with treating disrespectfully his two cities, to raise and adorn which
he had conquered nations. Hafiz replied, "Alas, my lord, if I had not
been so prodigal, I had not been so poor!"
The Persians had a mode of establishing copyright the most secure of any
contrivance with which we are acquainted. The law of the _ghaselle_, or
shorter ode, requires that the poet insert his name in the last stanza.
Almost every one of several hundreds of poems of Hafiz contains his name
thus interwoven more or less closely with the subject of the piece. It
is itself a test of skill, as this self-naming is not quite easy. We
remember but two or three examples in English poetry: that of Chaucer,
in the "House of Fame"; Jonson's epitaph on his son,--
"Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry";
and Cowley's,--
"The melancholy Cowley lay."
But it is easy to Hafiz. It gives him the opportunity of the most
playful self-assertion, always gracefully, sometimes almost in the fun
of Falstaff, sometimes with feminine delicacy. He tells us, "The angels
in heaven were lately learning his last pieces." He says, "The fishes
shed their pearls, out of desire and longing, as soon as the ship of
Hafiz swims the deep."
"Out of the East, and out of the West,
no man understands me;
Oh, the happier I, who confide to none but
the wind!
This morning heard I how the lyre of the
stars resounded,
'Sweeter tones have we heard from Hafiz!'"