Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. HAFIZ TO THE CUP-BEARER, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. HAFIZ TO THE CUP-BEARER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Dear son, that out of the crowded footways of shiraz
Last Line: A spell of life along the road together.
Subject(s): Hafez (1326-1390); Hafiz (1326-139)


DEAR Son, that out of the crowded footways of Shiraz,
With hesitant step emerging,
Camest and laid thy life down at my feet,
Faint and ashamed, like one by some divine wine vanquished:

I take thy gift, so gracious and sparkling-clear,
Thy naive offering, as of a simple Nature-child,
Wondering, like one who sees a rose in winter blooming, or cypress 'mid a
wilderness of rocks;
Or finds among the marl and clay beneath his feet
A ruby fair embedded—and stops and takes it.

[The Earth, so dead and gross, and yet to points of finest light
Still working in the silence of her unseen chambers!
And thou, great common People, slavish still and brute and ignorant, in
alley and tavern,
Yet in thy rugged mass fair hearts of finest glow
Infallibly condensing!]

Come, son (since thou hast said it), out of all Shiraz
Háfiz salutes thee comrade. Let us go
A spell of life along the road together.





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