Hafez on Life and time

212 ghazals

1. Ghazal 2: Where is right conduct, and where am I, the ruined one?
2. Ghazal 3: If that Turk of Shiraz would take my heart in hand,
3. Ghazal 5: My heart is slipping from my hand; you who have hearts, for God's sake help!
4. Ghazal 12: The moon of beauty takes its light from your shining face;
5. Ghazal 16: The curve your playful eyebrow set in its bow
6. Ghazal 19: O breeze of dawn, where is the resting place of the friend?
7. Ghazal 21: My heart and faith were gone, and the heart-stealer rose up in reproach;
8. Ghazal 22: When you hear the words of people of the heart, do not say they are wrong;
9. Ghazal 24: Do not ask obedience, vows or right conduct of me, the drunkard,
10. Ghazal 27: My beloved came into the Magian temple, a cup in hand,
11. Ghazal 28: By the master's life, by old right and true covenant,
12. Ghazal 31: That Night of Power the recluses speak of is tonight;
13. Ghazal 32: When God shaped the form of your heart-opening eyebrow,
14. Ghazal 33: What need has one who has chosen solitude to go sightseeing?
15. Ghazal 37: Come, for the palace of hope stands on very weak foundations;
16. Ghazal 38: Without the sun of your face, no light is left in my day,
17. Ghazal 41: Though wine gives joy and the wind sifts roses,
18. Ghazal 45: In this age, the friend who is free of fault
19. Ghazal 47: Every wayfarer who learned the way to the tavern street
20. Ghazal 49: The garden of highest paradise is the retreat of dervishes;
21. Ghazal 50: In the snare of your tress the heart is its own captive;
22. Ghazal 51: A well-watered ruby that thirsts for blood is my beloved's lip,
23. Ghazal 52: For a long time now, passion for the beautiful has been my religion;
24. Ghazal 53: I am one for whom the corner of the tavern is the dervish lodge;
25. Ghazal 55: The curl of your tress is the snare of unbelief and faith alike;
26. Ghazal 57: That dark-skinned one who has all the sweetness of the world
27. Ghazal 59: I hope for a kindness from the friend's court;
28. Ghazal 61: Morning breeze, if your way should take you to the friend's land,
29. Ghazal 62: Welcome, messenger of the longing ones; give the friend's message,
30. Ghazal 65: What is sweeter than pleasure, company, garden and spring?
31. Ghazal 70: The pupil of our eye looks at nothing but your face;
32. Ghazal 72: The road of love is a road that has no shore;
33. Ghazal 75: The sleepiness of your seductive narcissus eye is not for nothing;
34. Ghazal 76: Apart from your threshold I have no refuge in the world;
35. Ghazal 80: Do not find fault with the rends, O ascetic of pure nature,
36. Ghazal 82: That fairy-faced Turk who left our side last night,
37. Ghazal 84: Cupbearer, bring wine, for the month of fasting is gone;
38. Ghazal 88: I have heard a good saying that the old man of Canaan spoke:
39. Ghazal 90: O hoopoe of the east wind, I am sending you to Sheba;
40. Ghazal 91: O you who are absent from my sight, I entrust you to God;
41. Ghazal 92: My lord, how finely you walk; I would die for you, head to foot.
42. Ghazal 96: There is no cure for our pain. Help!
43. Ghazal 97: You are the one who sits like a crown on the head of a country's beauties;
44. Ghazal 98: If in your creed the blood of the lover is lawful,
45. Ghazal 100: Yesterday the old wine seller, may his name be blessed,
46. Ghazal 101: What is wine and pleasure in secret? A work without foundation.
47. Ghazal 102: Last night the wind brought news of the friend who has travelled;
48. Ghazal 103: The day of union with those who loved us, may it be remembered;
49. Ghazal 105: If the Sufi drinks wine in measure, may it do him good;
50. Ghazal 106: May your body never need the favours of physicians;
51. Ghazal 108: O king, may the ball of the sky be in the curve of your polo stick;
52. Ghazal 110: In my old age the love of a young one has come into my head,
53. Ghazal 112: The One who gave your cheek the colour of rose and wild rose
54. Ghazal 113: Last night the violet spoke to the rose and gave a fair sign:
55. Ghazal 114: The phoenix of the height of happiness will fall into our snare
56. Ghazal 115: Plant the tree of friendship, for it bears the heart's desire as fruit;
57. Ghazal 118: The one who holds a cup in his hand
58. Ghazal 120: I have an idol who keeps a canopy of hyacinth around the rose;
59. Ghazal 121: Whoever has a collected mind and a delicate beloved,
60. Ghazal 124: She whose hyacinth hair puts musk to the torment
61. Ghazal 128: There is no beauty in the city who can carry off our heart;
62. Ghazal 129: If wine does not carry the heart's grief out of our mind,
63. Ghazal 132: With the bright water of wine a gnostic made his ablution
64. Ghazal 135: Like the wind, I will set out for the end of the friend's street;
65. Ghazal 137: She took my heart from me and hid her face from me;
66. Ghazal 139: I laid my face on her road and she did not pass by me;
67. Ghazal 140: The heart-stealer went and gave no word to those who had lost their hearts;
68. Ghazal 151: The whole world is not worth one moment spent in grief;
69. Ghazal 153: At dawn, when the king of the east planted his banner on the mountains,
70. Ghazal 154: Play a tune to whose music one can heave a sigh;
71. Ghazal 155: If I go after her, she stirs up trouble;
72. Ghazal 156: In beauty, character and faithfulness no one comes near our friend;
73. Ghazal 161: How can a mind that is sad bring forth fresh verse?
74. Ghazal 163: The rose without the friend's face is not sweet;
75. Ghazal 164: The breath of the morning breeze will scatter musk;
76. Ghazal 167: A star shone out and became the moon of the gathering;
77. Ghazal 169: We see no friendship in anyone; what has become of the friends?
78. Ghazal 183: Last night at the hour of dawn they delivered me from grief,
79. Ghazal 186: If the wine seller grants the need of the rends,
80. Ghazal 190: Your musk-black pen, on the day it remembers us,
81. Ghazal 194: The jasmine-scented, when they sit down, lay the dust of grief;
82. Ghazal 200: Do you know what the harp and the lute are saying?
83. Ghazal 219: Now that in the meadow the rose has come from non-being into being,
84. Ghazal 222: Whoever goes away from the head of your street in weariness,
85. Ghazal 223: Never will your image leave the tablet of my heart and soul;
86. Ghazal 228: If I pick one fruit from your garden, what will it matter?
87. Ghazal 229: Fortune gives me no sign of the mouth of the friend;
88. Ghazal 232: I am resolved that, if it lies within my power,
89. Ghazal 236: If that bird of holiness comes back through my door,
90. Ghazal 237: My breath is spent and my desire from you is not fulfilled;
91. Ghazal 238: With the crescent the world has drawn dye across the eyebrow of the festival;
92. Ghazal 241: Companions, remember the comrade of your nights;
93. Ghazal 243: Whoever caught your sweet scent from the east wind
94. Ghazal 244: Companions, undo the knot of the friend's tress;
95. Ghazal 246: It is the festival, the last of the roses, and the friends are waiting;
96. Ghazal 249: East wind, bring a fragrance from the dust of the friend's road;
97. Ghazal 252: If life lasts, I will reach the tavern once again,
98. Ghazal 253: O you by the radiance of whose face the tulip bed of life is glad,
99. Ghazal 255: Lost Joseph will come back to Canaan; do not grieve.
100. Ghazal 256: I will give you a piece of advice; listen, and make no excuses:
101. Ghazal 257: Show your face and tell me: "Take your heart away from life."
102. Ghazal 265: My desire, in longing for your lip, has not yet been fulfilled;
103. Ghazal 268: One rose-cheeked beauty from the rose garden of the world is enough for us;
104. Ghazal 271: I have such complaints about his black tress: do not ask.
105. Ghazal 272: Come back, and be the soul's companion to my straitened heart,
106. Ghazal 273: If you are a kindly comrade, be true to your pledge;
107. Ghazal 277: The nightingale's whole thought is that the rose should be his friend;
108. Ghazal 278: I want a bitter wine whose strength can throw a man,
109. Ghazal 279: How pleasant is Shiraz, and its matchless setting!
110. Ghazal 280: When the east wind ruffled his amber-scattering tress,
111. Ghazal 283: At dawn good news reached my ear from the voice of the unseen:
112. Ghazal 288: The water's edge, the foot of the willow, a mind for poetry and a pleasant friend;
113. Ghazal 289: His cheek, like the moon, is the meeting place of beauty and grace,
114. Ghazal 290: My heart has bolted, and I, a poor dervish, do not know
115. Ghazal 293: In the morning, when from the private chamber of the palace of creation
116. Ghazal 294: In faithfulness to your love I am famous among the fair, like the candle;
117. Ghazal 296: If my star gives its help, I will bring his skirt into my hand;
118. Ghazal 297: The tongue of the pen has no will to give an account of separation;
119. Ghazal 298: A place of safety, wine without blemish and a kind friend:
120. Ghazal 299: If you drink wine, pour a draught out on the earth;
121. Ghazal 300: If a thousand enemies are set on destroying me,
122. Ghazal 306: If I am granted the chance of arriving in your street,
123. Ghazal 308: O you whose face is like paradise and whose ruby lip is its spring,
124. Ghazal 309: The play of love, and youth, and wine the colour of ruby;
125. Ghazal 312: Good news, for safety has alighted at Dhu Salam;
126. Ghazal 313: Come back, cupbearer, for I am eager to serve,
127. Ghazal 314: Last night the languor of your eye carried me away,
128. Ghazal 315: Apart from the fact that faith and learning slipped from my hands,
129. Ghazal 319: For years I followed the creed of the rends,
130. Ghazal 320: Last night with a flood of tears I was barring the road of sleep;
131. Ghazal 321: Though I have grown old, weary of heart and feeble,
132. Ghazal 322: I drew the image of your form in the workshop of my eye;
133. Ghazal 323: Because of my own short reach I am weighed down,
134. Ghazal 325: If the dust from the sole of my beloved's foot comes to my hand,
135. Ghazal 327: I have a covenant with the beloved that, as long as there is life in my body,
136. Ghazal 329: At dawn the Twins laid their sword-belt down before me,
137. Ghazal 330: You are like the morning, and I am the candle of the solitude of dawn;
138. Ghazal 333: At the strangers' evening prayer, when I begin to weep,
139. Ghazal 334: If my hand should reach your two tresses once again,
140. Ghazal 336: Where is the good news of union with you, that I may rise up out of life itself?
141. Ghazal 337: Why should I not set my mind on returning to my own land?
142. Ghazal 340: I, who from the fire of my heart am seething like the jar of wine,
143. Ghazal 341: If I gave any thought to the reproaches of the pretenders,
144. Ghazal 344: For a lifetime, in my seeking, I have been taking a step each day;
145. Ghazal 351: God forbid that I should give up wine in the season of the rose;
146. Ghazal 352: For a long time now I have been serving in the tavern;
147. Ghazal 354: With your black lashes you have made a thousand breaches in my faith;
148. Ghazal 355: For the present I see the wisdom of the hour in this:
149. Ghazal 356: If it should lie within my power to sit with the keeper of my heart,
150. Ghazal 358: For the grief of the times, to which I can see no shore,
151. Ghazal 359: Happy the day when I leave this ruined halting place,
152. Ghazal 362: The meeting has come about, and the kiss and the embrace as well;
153. Ghazal 365: It is a lifetime since we set our face towards the road of grief for you,
154. Ghazal 368: Rise, so that we may seek an opening at the door of the tavern,
155. Ghazal 370: What virtue do you look for from us? We have called the drunken to the feast;
156. Ghazal 371: We have laid down our dawn lesson on the road to the tavern;
157. Ghazal 379: My head is merry, and I say it in a loud voice:
158. Ghazal 382: When you come, recite a Fatiha over one who is worn out with sickness;
159. Ghazal 385: O Lord, bring that musk-scented deer back to Khotan,
160. Ghazal 389: Like the rose, at every moment, catching your scent,
161. Ghazal 392: Do you know what good fortune is? To see the face of the friend;
162. Ghazal 394: O you whose moon-like face is the new spring of beauty,
163. Ghazal 395: Make of the musk-dark hyacinth a veil for the rose petal;
164. Ghazal 398: O light of my eyes, there is something to be said: listen.
165. Ghazal 401: When I become the dust of his road, he shakes his skirt free of me;
166. Ghazal 404: Cast on the ranks of the rends a glance better than this;
167. Ghazal 405: By the life of the elder of the tavern and the right of his company,
168. Ghazal 406: He said: you went out to watch the new moon;
169. Ghazal 409: O you, the dust of whose road is the blood-price of the musk of China;
170. Ghazal 410: O you on whose stature the robe of kingship fits exactly;
171. Ghazal 414: The rose bush of pleasure is in bloom: where is the rose-cheeked cupbearer?
172. Ghazal 418: If swords rain down in the lane of that moon,
173. Ghazal 419: Union with him is better than everlasting life;
174. Ghazal 424: Do not part from me, for you are the light of my eyes,
175. Ghazal 425: He was passing by, trailing his skirt, in fine linen worked with gold;
176. Ghazal 426: With the blood of my heart I wrote a letter to the friend:
177. Ghazal 427: The candle has become the moth of the lamp of your face;
178. Ghazal 428: At daybreak, still heavy from the night's drinking,
179. Ghazal 429: Cupbearer, come, for the cup of the tulip has filled with wine;
180. Ghazal 430: If you will not drink wine to the voice of nightingale and turtledove,
181. Ghazal 431: I kiss his lip and drain the wine;
182. Ghazal 434: O heart, do not be for one moment empty of love and drunkenness,
183. Ghazal 437: O you, of whose lane the story of paradise is but a tale,
184. Ghazal 441: How would it be if the heart of that moon were kind?
185. Ghazal 442: By his life: if I had my own life within my reach,
186. Ghazal 443: If, like the cypress, you stroll for a moment in a rose garden,
187. Ghazal 445: You who have everything in the world that can be desired,
188. Ghazal 448: O you who have a place in the lane of the tavern,
189. Ghazal 450: For a long time now you have kept us anxious;
190. Ghazal 455: Life has gone by in fruitlessness and idle whims;
191. Ghazal 456: It is early spring: strive to be glad of heart,
192. Ghazal 459: With this fine script that you draw on the rose of your cheek,
193. Ghazal 460: Ever since Sulayma settled in Iraq,
194. Ghazal 461: I wrote the story of my longing while my eyes were weeping;
195. Ghazal 462: O smiling mouth that is like a casket of pearls,
196. Ghazal 463: The peace of God, for as long as the nights return
197. Ghazal 464: The affair of your beauty, like my love, has reached perfection;
198. Ghazal 466: This cloak that I have is better in pawn for wine,
199. Ghazal 467: Of that wine of love by which every raw one is ripened,
200. Ghazal 468: Who will carry a message from me, a beggar, to the kings:
201. Ghazal 469: The scents of the bay tree of the sanctuary have come, and my passion has grown;
202. Ghazal 471: Who will bring me the kindness of a line from my beloved's pen?
203. Ghazal 473: Count time as gain, as far as you are able;
204. Ghazal 475: People said that you are a second Joseph;
205. Ghazal 476: Breeze of the morning of good fortune, by the sign that you know,
206. Ghazal 477: Two shrewd friends, and two measures of old wine,
207. Ghazal 482: O heart, you do not pass through the lane of love;
208. Ghazal 489: O you in whose face the lights of kingship are plain to see,
209. Ghazal 491: I have fixed in my eye the eyebrow of one with a face like the moon;
210. Ghazal 492: A greeting, like the pleasant scent of friendship,
211. Ghazal 494: O heart, if you come up out of that pit in the chin,
212. Ghazal 495: "Ask for wine and scatter roses: what do you seek from time?"