An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 464
Your beauty's work has reached a perfection, like my love;
rejoice — for to neither of these two is there any decline.
It comes not into imagining, that in reason's conceiving
there should rise, by any measure, a likeness fairer than this.
Life's whole delight is won, if it should be that for us, with you,
once in a lifetime, one single day, there fall a union.
That hour when I am with you, a whole year is but a day;
and that hour without you, a single instant is a year.
How, O my soul, should I see your face in dream,
when my eye sees, out of sleep, nothing but a phantom?
Take pity on my heart, for from love of your fair face
my strengthless frame has grown thin as a crescent moon.
Hafez, raise no complaint, if you seek the Friend's union;
more than this you must bear an endurance of your parting.