“ 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:
sunetois 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. ”

“ The favor of the climate, making subsistence easy, and encouraging
an outdoor life, allows to the Eastern nations a highly intellectual
organization,--leaving out of view, at present, the genius of the
Hindoos, (more Oriental in every sense,) whom no people have surpassed
in the grandeur of their ethical statement. The Persians and the Arabs,
with great leisure and few books, are exquisitely sensible to the
pleasures of poetry. Layard has given some details of the effect which
the _improvvisatori_ produced on the children of the desert. ”

“ The last to Hafiz went."
Another:--
"High heart, O Hafiz! though not thine
Fine gold and silver ore;
More worth to thee the gift of song,
And the clear insight more."
Again:--
"Thou foolish Hafiz! say, do churls
Know the worth of Oman's pearls?
Give the gem which dims the moon
To the noblest, or to none."
Again:--
"O Hafiz! speak not of thy need;
Are not these verses thine?
Then all the poets are agreed,
No man can less repine."
He asserts his dignity as bard and inspired man of his people. ”

“ Is the Tigris to float me away."
NISAMI.
"While roses bloomed along the plain,
The nightingale to the falcon said,
'Why, of all birds, must thou be dumb?
With closed mouth thou utterest,
Though dying, no last word to man. ”

“ The other Bedouins were scarcely less moved by
these rude measures, which have the same kind of effect on the wild
tribes of the Persian mountains. Such verses, chanted by their
self-taught poets, or by the girls of their encampment, will drive
warriors to the combat, fearless of death, or prove an ample reward,
on their return from the dangers of the _ghazon_, or the fight. The
excitement they produce exceeds that of the grape. ”

“ The seven masters of the Persian Parnassus, Firdousi, Enweri,
Nisami, Dschelaleddin, Saadi, Hafiz, and Dschami, have ceased to be
empty names; and others, like Ferideddin Attar, and Omar Chiam, promise
to rise in Western estimation. That for which mainly books exist is
communicated in these rich extracts. Many qualities go to make a good
telescope,--as the largeness of the field, facility of sweeping the
meridian, achromatic purity of lenses, and so forth,--but the one
eminent value is the space-penetrating power ”

“ The cedar, the cypress, the palm, the olive, and fig-tree, and the birds
that inhabit them, and the garden flowers, are never wanting in these
musky verses, and are always named with effect. "The willows," he says,
"bow themselves to every wind, out of shame for their unfruitfulness." ”

“ He
fears nothing, he stops for nothing. Love is a leveller, and Allah
becomes a groom, and heaven a closet, in his daring hymns to his
mistress or to his cup-bearer. This boundless charter is the right of
genius. "No evil fate," said Beethoven, "can befall my music, and he to
whom it is become intelligible must become free from all the paltriness
which the others drag about with them."
We do not wish to strew sugar on bottled spiders, or try to make
mystical divinity out of the Song of Solomon, much less out of the
erotic and bacchanalian songs of Hafiz. ”

“ That hardihood and self-equality of every sound nature, which result
from the feeling that the spirit in him is entire and as good as the
world, which entitle the poet to speak with authority, and make him an
object of interest, and his every phrase and syllable significant, are
in Hafiz, and abundantly fortify and ennoble his tone.
His was the fluent mind in which every thought and feeling came readily
to the lips. "Loose the knots of the heart," he says. We absorb elements
enough, but have not leaves and lungs for healthy perspiration and
growth. ”

“ Wrong shall not be
wrong to Hafiz, for the name's sake. A law or statute is to him what a
fence is to a nimble schoolboy,--a temptation for a jump. "We would do
nothing but good; else would shame come to us on the day when the soul
must hie hence;--and should they then deny us Paradise, the Houris
themselves would forsake that, and come out to us."
His complete intellectual emancipation he communicates to the reader.
There is no example of such facility of allusion, such use of all
materials. Nothing is too high, nothing too low, for his occasion. ”

“ Gnomic verses, rules of life, conveyed in a
lively image, especially in an image addressed to the eye, and contained
in a single stanza, were always current in the East; and if the poem
is long, it is only a string of unconnected verses. They use an
inconsecutiveness quite alarming to Western logic, and the connection
between the stanzas of their longer odes is much like that between the
refrain of our old English ballads,
"The sun shines fair on Carlisle wall,"
or
"The rain it raineth every day,"
and the main story. ”

“ Yet Hafiz does not
appear to have set any great value on his songs, since his scholars
collected them for the first time after his death.
In the following poem the soul is figured as the Phoenix alighting on
the Tree of Life:--
"My phoenix long ago secured
His nest in the sky-vault's cope;
In the body's cage immured,
He is weary of life's hope.
"Round and round this heap of ashes
Now flies the bird amain,
But in that odorous niche of heaven
Nestles the bird again.
"Once flies he upward, he will perch
On Tuba's golden bough ”

“ What is pent and smouldered
in the dumb actor is not pent in the poet, but passes over into new
form, at once relief and creation.
The other merit of Hafiz is his intellectual liberty, which is a
certificate of profound thought. We accept the religions and politics
into which we fall ”

“ 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" ”

“ It is related, that, when the Queen of Sheba
came to visit Solomon, he had built, against her arrival, a palace, of
which the floor or pavement was of glass, laid over running water, in
which fish were swimming. The Queen of Sheba was deceived thereby, and
raised her robes, thinking she was to pass through the water. On the
occasion of Solomon's marriage, all the beasts, laden with presents,
appeared before his throne. Behind them all came the ant with a blade of
grass: Solomon did not despise the gift of the ant. ”

“ But it is easy to Hafiz. It gives him the opportunity of the most
playful self-assertion, always gracefully, sometimes almost in the fun
of Falstaff, sometimes with feminine delicacy. He tells us, "The angels
in heaven were lately learning his last pieces." He says, "The fishes
shed their pearls, out of desire and longing, as soon as the ship of
Hafiz swims the deep."
"Out of the East, and out of the West,
no man understands me ”