An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 465
I went to the garden at dawn, to pluck a single rose;
of a sudden there came to my ear the voice of a nightingale.
Wretched, like me, it had fallen sick with the love of a rose,
and had flung through the meadow a tumult out of its cry.
I kept walking that meadow and garden, breath upon breath,
musing over that rose and that nightingale awhile.
The rose grew the mate of beauty, the nightingale love's consort;
in that, no fickleness — and in this, no change at all.
When the nightingale's voice had wrought its work on my heart,
I became such that no endurance was left to me.
Many a rose blooms in this garden; and yet
none has plucked a rose from it without the thorn's affliction.
Hafez, hold no hope of relief from the wheeling sphere;
a thousand flaws it holds, and holds not a single grace.