THE DEATH OF HAFIZ.
1.
News came in the night from the land of my love;
It was wafted me down on the wings of a dove.
In the visions of midnight a voice to me said,
“Dwell no more, o my heart, in the house of the dead!
To Paradise-Garden thee home They recall.
Why linger so long on this base-fostering ball?
What little of light and what scantling of sooth
It yields is the bud and the blossom of youth.
But bitter as fennel's the fruitage of age
And the bird breaks its wings on the wires of the cage.
Thy wings were to winnow the firmament framed;
Yet with beating the bars of this madhouse they're maimed.
From the ramparts of Heaven they warble to thee.
Hark, Gabriel hails from the Boundary-Tree!
They call thee to cast off the bondage of earth;
They bid thee return to the land of thy birth.
Too long hast thou sung for this world, where none hears:
Henceforth shalt thou sing with the seraphs, thy peers.”
2.
All night on the garden there glittered the moon:
The land was as light as the Midsummer noon.
The roses breathed balm, on the sprays as they swung;
The nightingales sang, as they never had sung.
All night Hafiz sat by the murmuring stream,
His head on his hand and his eyes on his dream.
His brows were begirt with the moon's aureole
And with visions of Paradise filled was his soul.
For cupmates, he drank with the Archangels Seven;
They gave him to eat of the honey of Heaven.
All night thus he sat by the rivulet's head;
And when the morn morrowed, the poet was dead.
