_Stanza 1._—Blue is the Persian colour of mourning. Hafiz compares the
weeping lovers, clad in robes of grief, to a bed of violets, and as the
violets bow their heads when the wind passes over them, so they bow down
when their mistress passes by with flowing curls.
_Stanza 3._—“Erghwan,” the Syringa Persica or Persian lilac. In the
early spring, before it comes into leaf, it is covered with buds of a
beautiful reddish-purple colour.
“Khizr,” a prophet whom the Mahommadans confound with Phineas, Elias,
and St. George, saying that his soul passed by metempsychosis
successively through all three. He discovered the fountain of life and
drank of it, thereby making himself immortal. It is said that he guided
Alexander to the same fountain, which lay in the Land of Darkness. It
was he, too, for whom Moses set out to seek when he had been informed by
God that Al Khizr was wiser than he. He found him seated on a rock, at
the meeting of the two seas, and followed him for a time, learning
wisdom from him, as is related in the eighteenth chapter of the Koran.
His name signifies Green; wherever his feet rested, the earth was
covered with green herbs.
Hafiz looked upon the prophet Al Khizr as one of his special guardians.
About four Persian miles from Shiraz there is a spot called Pir-i-Sabz,
the Old Green Man; whosoever should pass forty nights in it without
sleeping, on the fortieth night Al Khizr would appear to him and confer
upon him the immortal gift of song. Hafiz in his youth fell in love with
a beautiful girl of Shiraz called Shakh-i-Nahat, and in order to win her
heart he determined to meet Al Khizr and receive from him the art of
poetry. For thirty-nine mornings he walked beneath the windows of
Shakh-i-Nahat, at noon he ate, then he slept, and at night he kept
watch, undismayed by the terrible apparition of a fierce lion which was
his nightly companion. At length, on the fortieth morning, Shakh-i-Nahat
called him into her house and told him that she was ready to become his
wife, for she preferred a man of genius to the son of a king. She would
have kept him with her, but Hafiz, though he had gained his original
end, was now filled with desire to become a poet, and insisted upon
keeping his fortieth vigil. That night an old man dressed in green
garments came to him and brought him a cup of the water of immortality.