An omen from Hafez
Ghazal 495
Ask for wine and scatter roses — what do you seek of the age?
So spoke the rose at dawn: nightingale, and what say you?
Set your seat in the rose-garden, that you may kiss the lip and cheek
of beloved and cupbearer, drink the wine, and breathe the rose.
Set the box-tree strolling, and turn your tune toward the rose-garden,
that the cypress may learn heart-winning from your stature.
To whom will your laughing bud bestow good fortune —
O graceful rose-branch, for whose sake do you grow?
Today, when your market thrives with eager buyers,
seize the moment, and lay up a treasure from the stock of virtue.
Since, like the candle, fair-facedness lies in the passing wind,
gather up some corner of merit from the candle of fair-facedness.
That tress, each curl of which is worth a hundred musk-pods of Cathay,
would be a joy indeed, if its scent were of a sweet disposition.
Every bird came with a melody to the rose-garden of the king:
the nightingale in its warbling, Hafez in his ghazal-song.