_Stanza 5._—Shah Shudja, as has been related in the Introduction, was
not always on the best of terms with Hafiz, partly because he was
jealous of the latter’s fame as a poet, and partly because Hafiz had
been the protégé of Shah Shudja’s former rival, Abu Ishac. Accordingly
the King looked about for some means of doing the poet an injury, nor
was it long before he found what he sought. He accused Hafiz of denying
the Resurrection, basing the accusation upon the last couplet of this
poem—the last three lines of the present translation—and cited him
before the Ulema as an infidel. But Hafiz was too many for him. Before
the day on which he was to answer the charge against himself, he
inserted another couplet into the ode, in which he stated that the
dangerous lines did not express his own opinion, but that of a heretical
Christian. He came off with flying colours; for not only was he entirely
cleared, but it was also acknowledged that he had dealt a good blow on
behalf of the Mahommadan religion, since he had shown up one of the
errors of the infidel.