Signify we purest love.

Youth like lightning disappears,
Life goes by us as the wind:

Leave the dwelling with six doors,

And the serpent with nine heads;
Life and silver spend thou freely,

If thou honourest the soul.

Haste into the other life;

All is nought save God alone.
Give me, boy, this toy of dæmons.
When the cup of Jam was lost,
Him availed the world no more.
Fetch the wine-glass made of ice,
Wake the torpid heart with wine.
Every clod of loam below us
Is a skull of Alexander;

Oceans are the blood of princes;

Desert sands the dust of beauties.

More than one Darius was there Who the whole world overcame ; But since these gave up the ghost, Thinkest thou they never were? Boy, go from me to the Shah,

Say to him; Shah crowned as Jam, Win thou first the poor man's heart, Then the glass; so know the world.

Empty sorrows from the earth
Canst thou drive away with wine.
Now in thy throne's recent beauty,
In the flowing tide of power,
Moon of fortune, mighty king,
Whose tiara sheddeth lustre,
Peace secure to fish and fowl,
Heart and eye-sparkle to saints;
Shoreless is the sea of praise,—
I content me with a prayer.
From Nisami's poet-works,
Highest ornament of speech,
Here a verse will I recite,

Verse as beautiful as pearls.

'More kingdoms wait thy diadem,

'Than are known to thee by name;

'May the sovran destiny

'Grant a victory every morn!'

FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ.

OF Paradise, O hermit wise,

Let us renounce the thought.

Of old therein our names of sin

Allah recorded not.

Who dear to God on earthly sod

No corn-grain plants,

The same is glad that life is had,

Though corn he wants.

Thy mind the mosque and cool kiosk,

Spare fast, and orisons;

Mine me allows the drinking-house,

And sweet chase of the nuns.

O just fakeer, with brow austere,

Forbid me not the vine;

On the first day, poor Hafiz clay

Was kneaded up with wine.

He is no dervise, Heaven slights his service,

Who shall refuse

There in the banquet, to pawn his blanket

For Schiraz's juice.

Who his friend's shirt, or hem of his shirt,

Shall spare to pledge,

To him Eden's bliss and Angel's kiss

Shall want their edge.

Up, Hafiz; grace from high God's face

Beams on thee pure;

Shy then not hell, and trust thou well,
Heaven is secure.

XENOPHANES.

By fate, not option, frugal nature gave

One scent to hyson and to wallflower,

One sound to pine-groves and to waterfalls,
One aspect to the desert and the lake,
It was her stern necessity. All things

Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and plant,

Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character, Deceive us, seeming to be many things,

And are but one.

Beheld far off, they part

As God and Devil; bring them to the mind,
They dull its edge with their monotony.

To know the old element explore a new,
And in the second reappears the first.

The specious panorama of a year
But multiplies the image of a day,
A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame,

And universal nature through her vast
And crowded whole, an infinite paroquet,
Repeats one cricket note.