y of sensual joys, and to ejaculate with equal fire the most
unpalatable affirmations of heroic sentiment and contempt for the world.
Sometimes it is a glance from the height of thought, as thus:--"Bring
wine; for, in the audience-hall of the soul's independence, what is
sentinel or Sultan? what is the wise man or the intoxicated?" And
sometimes his feast, feasters, and world are only one pebble more in the
eternal vortex and revolution of Fate:--

"I am; what I am
My dust will be again."

A saint might lend an ear to the riotous fun of Falstaff; for it is not
created to excite the animal appetites, but to vent the joy of a
supernal intelligence. In all poetry, Pindar's rule holds,--[Greek:
synetois phonei], it speaks to the intelligent; and Hafiz is a poet for
poets, whether he write, as sometimes, with a parrot's, or, as at other
times, with an eagle's quill.

Every song of Hafiz affords new proof of the unimportance of your
subject to success, provided only the treatment be cordial. In general,
what is more tedious than dedications or panegyrics addressed to
grandees? Yet in the "Divan" you would not skip them, since his muse
seldom supports him better.

"What lovelier forms things wear,
Now that the Shah comes back!"

And again:--

"Thy foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down,
Poises Arcturus aloft morning and evening his spear."

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 Shiraz!
I would give for the mole on thy cheek Samarcand and Buchara!"--

the verses came to the ear 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