If those fair witnesses of beauty ravish hearts in such a wise,
they'll breach and shatter to its core the faith of the ascetic band.
Wherever that one branch of narcissus opens into bloom,
the rose-cheeked make of their own eye a vessel to hold its bright flower.
O cypress-statured youth, come, strike the ball while yet you may,
before they carve a polo-mace out of that upright form of yours.
Lovers have no command at all over their own bewildered heads;
whatever thing you bid them do, that very thing they straight perform.
Less than a single water-drop appears it to my flooded eye—
all these vast tales that men rehearse of Noah's overwhelming flood.
When our beloved first begins the whirling of the sacred dance,
the holy ones upon the Throne fling up their hands in ecstasy.
The pupil of my streaming eye is steeped and soaked through with my blood;
in what far land, on any man, do they work such a tyranny?
Come to good terms with grief, my heart, for they who guard the inmost secret
take their sweet pleasure and delight within the crucible of parting.
Withhold not, Hafez, from the world your sigh at deep of midnight raised,
until, like dawn, they make of you a mirror gleaming with clear light.
