An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 125
The true beauty is not the one who owns a fine hair and slim waist;
be slave to the countenance of one who holds a certain grace.
Delicate though the ways of houri and fairy may be, yet
the goodness, and the grace, is what a certain one possesses.
O laughing rose, take the fountain of my eye by the hand,
for in hope of you it holds a fair and flowing water.
Who has snatched the ball of beauty from you? For the sun, out there,
is no horseman that holds a bridle in its hand.
My words struck home in the heart the moment you received them;
yes, yes — the speech of love bears its own true mark.
The arch of your brow, in the art and craft of archery,
has stripped the field from the hand of all who bend a bow.
On love's road none has become, in certainty, the secret's confidant;
each, by the measure of his thought, keeps but a guess.
Boast of no miracles among the tavern-sitters;
every word has its time, and every fine point its place.
The shrewd bird will not spread its song within a meadow
that keeps an autumn treading on the heel of every spring.
Tell the pretender: peddle no riddle nor point to Hafez,
for our pen too keeps a tongue and an eloquence of its own.