The Project Gutenberg eBook, Hafiz in London, by Hāfiz, 14th cent., Translated by Justin H. (Justin Huntly) McCarthy

HAFIZ IN LONDON

PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

HAFIZ IN LONDON

BY
JUSTIN HUNTLY M^cCARTHY, M.P.

ﺍﻛﺮ ﺑﺰﻟﻒ ﺫﺭﺍﺯ ﺗﻮ ﺩﺳﻦ ﻣﺎ ﻧﺮ ﺳﺪ Agar be zolf-e daraz-e to dast-e ma narasad
ﻛﻨﺎﻩ ﻧﺨﺖ ﭘﺮﻳﺸﺎﻥ ﻭ ﺩﺳﺖ ﻛﻮﺗﻪ ﻣﺎﺳﺖ gonah-e bakht-e parishan o dast-e kutah-e ma-st

London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1886

[The right of translation is reserved]

DEDICATION.

Ferangis, at thy feet I lay

These roses from the haunted coast

Of Faristan, whose poets boast

Their Rocknabad and Mosellay;

For I was in Shiraz to-day,

With ancient Hafiz for my host,

Who, like a comfortable ghost,

With Persian roses crowned my stay.

They are thy tribute from the land

Of Khayyam and our Khalifate,

For on their crimson folds of fate

A wizard ciphered with his wand

Words which I dare not here translate,

But you will read and understand.

CONTENTS.

HAFIZ IN LONDON.

HAFIZ IN LONDON.

Hafiz in London! even so.

For not alone by Rukni’s flow

The ruddy Persian roses grow.

Not only ’neath the cypress groves,

With soul on fire the singer roves,

And tells the laughing stars his loves.

Here in this city—where I brood

Beside the river’s darkling flood,

And feed the fever in my blood

With Eastern fancies quaintly traced

On yellow parchment, half effaced

In verses subtly interlaced—

Men eat and drink, men love and die,

Beneath this leaden London sky,

As eastward where the hoopoos fly,

And through the tranquil evening air

A muezzin from the turret stair

Summons all faithful souls to prayer.

And we who drink the Saki’s wine

Believe its juice no less divine

Than filled, Hafiz, that cup of thine.

Master and most benign of shades,

Before thy gracious phantom fades

To Mosellay’s enchanted glades,

Breathe on my lips, and o’er my brain

Some comfort for thy child, whose pain

Strives as you strove, but strives in vain.

When sundown sets the world on fire,

The music of the Master’s lyre

Deadens the ache of keen desire.

Reading this painted Persian page,

Where, half a lover, half a sage,

You built your heart a golden cage,

My fancy, skimming southern seas,

Wanders at twilight where the breeze

Flutters the dark pomegranate trees.

We all are sultans in our dreams

Of gardens where the sunlight gleams

On fairer flowers and clearer streams;

And thus in dreams I seek my home

Where dim Shiraz, dome after dome,

Smiles on the water’s silver foam;

The dancing girls, with tinkling feet

And many-coloured garments, beat

Their drums adown the twisted street;

And while the revel sways along,

The scented, flower-crowned, laughing throng

Seem part and parcel of thy song.

Hafiz, night’s rebel angels sweep

Across the sun; I pledge you deep,

And smiling, sighing, sink to sleep.

MEMORY.

Sitting silent in the twilight, faces of my former loves

Float about my fancy softly, like a silver flight of doves.

Brighter than the stars of heaven is the shining of their eyes,

Sweeter are their angel voices than the speech of Paradise.

I am old and grey and weary, winter in my blood and brain;

But to-night these haunting phantoms conjure up my youth again.

Lovingly I name them over, all that world of gracious girls,

Almond-eyed and jasmine-bosomed, like a poet stringing pearls.

In my tranquil cypress mazes just outside the sleepy town,

Blooms a tribe of laughing lilies fairer than a kingly crown.

Every lily in the garden wears a woman’s gracious name,

Every lily in the garden set my spirit once aflame;

And amongst that throng of lilies scarcely whiter than his hair,

Hafiz sits and dreams at sunset of the flowers no longer fair;

Of the sweethearts dead and buried whom I worshipped long ago,

When this beard as grey as ashes was as sable as the sloe.

I would weep if I were wiser, but the idle child of song

Leaves reflection to the Mullah, sorrow to the Sufi throng.

Am I wrong to be contented in the sunlight to rehearse

Pleasant tales of love and lovers in my honey-laden verse?

While the vinepress with the life-blood of the purple clusters drips,

I forget how slowly, surely, day by day to darkness slips,

Heedless how beyond the gateway in the field the nations jar,

Hand on throat and hand on sabre in the trampled lanes of war.

Ah! ’tis better on this pleasant river bank to lie reclined,

While the ghosts of old affections fill the harem of my mind.

Think no more of love and lasses, Hafiz; you can scarcely hold

The Koran with trembling fingers. Hafiz, you are growing old.

ELD.

Hafiz, you are growing old;

Hafiz, all the girls abandon

Bards whose blood is getting cold,

Bards whom Time has laid his hand on.

All the merry songs you sung

In the days when you were young,

Are not worth a feather’s weight

To arrest the fist of Fate

When it jogs your shifting sand on.

Hafiz, though a tinge of grey

Shames the locks that once were sable,

Drink and laugh the world away,

Swear that eld’s a housewife’s fable;

Vow that youth is always yours

While the graceful gait allures,

While the perfume haunts the rose,

While a ruddy balsam flows

From the flagon on the table.

Just a word within your ear,

Hafiz: you’re a craven creature

If you waste a single tear

On the thought that every feature

Of the fairest face a maid

Ever showed the sun must fade;

Rather bid your mistress weigh

Youth and beauty’s barren stay,

And a wiser lesson teach her.

Tell her youth was made for love;

Tell her wine was made for drinking;

Tell her that in heaven above

Mahmoud and his saints are winking

At the golden jest of youth;

Tell her wisdom’s wisest truth

Is, be merry while you may,

Cease regretting yesterday,

Or about to-morrow thinking.

LONG AGO.

All my youth’s desires are buried,

Each within its narrow grave;

Long ago their ghosts were ferried

O’er Jaihun’s enchanted wave;

Wild ambitions bright and brave,

Loves that made me serve a slave,

All have slipped away like snow

Long ago.

Stars in which my youth delighted

Vanish from the heavenly band,

And I wander a benighted

Stranger in a stranger land;

There is no one left to stand

By my side or take my hand,

Of the friends I worshipped so

Long ago.

One sweet name of all the number

Haunts the chambers of my brain,

One sweet shape disturbs my slumber,

Loved too well and loved in vain.

Ah, Ferangis! give again

Half the pleasure, all the pain,

That my boyhood used to know

Long ago.

These are dreams: I must remember

That my youthful days are dead,

That the rigours of December

Grizzle e’en a poet’s head.

Gone is gone, and dead is dead,

And no roses bloom as red

As the roses used to blow

Long ago.

Though my eyes pursue the swallow

As he travels towards the sun,

Aged limbs refuse to follow

Where the fancies lightly run.

Hafiz, cease, the game is done,

Life’s fantastic robe is spun;

Fate marked out the way to go

Long ago.

You were passionate, my poet,

In your manhood’s golden dawn;

Seized the seed of life to sow it

On the tulip-tinted lawn;

Now you sit at home and yawn,

Withered, grizzled, bent and drawn,

By the hearth: you scorned its glow

Long ago.

What is left? a sigh, a shudder,

For my past, and for the goal

Where, a boat without a rudder,

Drifts my tempest-troubled soul;

Ah! death’s angel, taking toll,

Shall I find within thy bowl

Better wine than used to flow

Long ago?

VANITY.

I dreamt all night of your cold caresses;

Your kisses froze on my lips like flakes

Of pitiless snow that chills and breaks

The warm heart snared in your sombre tresses.

I woke with a groan in the livid morning,

Groaned and swore I would break away

From the bitter bondage of love, and repay

Laughter with laughter, and scorn with scorning.

Ere noon was hot in the heavens, I met you;

You had but to smile as you passed, and lo!

I was your lover again. Heigho!

Hate you or love you, I can’t forget you.

KAIF.

Mine be the musk and the music, mine be the laughing girl;

Mine be the ample flagon, brimmed with the blood of the vine;

Mine the divan encushioned, watching the dancers twirl;

Mine the narghili serpent, breathing its soul divine.

Others can juggle with statecraft, others can lust for command;

Others can envy their fellows woman or vintage or gold;

Others can wrangle for title, fight for a rood of land;

Others think souls and bodies things to be bought and sold.

Such as they are, God made them; such as they are, God guides;

Such as they are, they do their task, fill place in the world awhile;

Such as they are, they eat and drink, and sleep on the breasts of their brides;

Such as they are, they sicken and die—may jackals their graves defile.

I for my part am happy, I for my part am calm,

I for my part rejoice to the full in the hour that glideth by,

I for my part with all my heart delight in the vineyard’s balm,

I for my part will love and laugh till my moment comes to die.

Grant me, Allah, digestion; grant me, Allah, desire;

Grant me a mistress with almond eyes and cinnamon-scented breath;

Grant me a golden vessel filled with the vineyard’s fire;

Grant me, Allah, a lazy life, and later a lazy death.

Dearest, I once was foolish; dearest, I once was young;

Dearest, I once would have sold my soul for the price of a passionate kiss;

Dearest, you know what your lover was when the songs of his youth were sung;

Dearest, the devil deserves your soul for driving me down to this.

YOU AND I.

Spare your censures, worthy friend, on my love of drinking;

Shut your senses, if you please, to the glasses clinking.

Only, while you rest with me, prithee keep your curses

For some other fellow’s wine, other fellow’s verses.

By what frenzy of reproof is your wisdom bitten?

Are the sins that I commit in your volume written?

If I run a tavern score, you don’t pay the reckoning;

If the Lotus-maiden nods, not to you she’s beckoning.

Who shall say behind the Veil which is good and evil?

Who shall say if you or I journey to the devil?

Very varied laws of life you and I are firm on;

Which of us, my friend, is text? which of us is sermon?

Every sober man or drunk seeks his soul’s ideal;

In the tavern and the mosque love alike is real.

Paradise is fair indeed; but this side of heaven

There is joy in noonday sun, joy in shades of even.

Be not boastful of thy worth, for who knows when mounted

To the final judgment-seat how his sum is counted?

Sanctimonious folk like you, filled with moral phrases,

May be sent, to your surprise, packing off to blazes;

While poor rogues like us, who drink ere the vintage fail us,

May be plucked to Paradise from this very alehouse.

CONSOLATION.

Weep not for the lost Yusuf, in Canaan his eyes shall close;

Weep not for your wasted garden, it shall blossom like the rose.

Weep not for your nights of revel, weep not for your days of tears,

For an hour’s repentance cancels all the sins of sixty years.

Weep not, soul with sorrow laden, once again the spring returns;

Singer of the night, your planet once again in heaven burns.

Weep not for your boyhood’s passions, weep not for your youth’s despair;

Every poet’s heart was tangled sometime in a woman’s hair.

Weep not, watcher for to-morrow, that thou never canst prevail

With the stars to tell the secret shrouded up behind the Veil.

Weep not if life’s gloomy pathway terrifies your wandering soul,

For the byeway, not the highway, best conducteth to the goal.

Weep not for the loss of brother, grieve not at the gain of foe;