"Come!—the palace of heaven rest on aëry pillars,— Come, and bring me wine; our days are wind. I declare myself the slave of that masculine soul Which ties and alliance on earth once for ever renounces. Told I thee yester-morn how the Iris of heaven Brought to me in my cup a gospel of joy? O high-flying falcon! the Tree of Life is thy perch; This nook of grief fits thee ill for a nest. Hearken! they call to thee down from the ramparts of heaven; I cannot divine what holds thee here in a net. I, too, have a counsel for thee; O mark it and keep it. Since I received the same from the Master above: Seek not for faith or for truth in a world of light-minded girls; A thousand suitors reckons this dangerous bride. Cumber thee not for the world, and this my precept forget not, 'Tis but a toy that a vagabond sweetheart has left us. Accept whatever befalls; uncover thy brow from thy locks; Never to me nor to thee was option imparted; Neither endurance nor truth belongs to the laugh of the rose. The loving nightingale mourns;—cause enow for mourning;— Why envies the bird the streaming verses of Hafiz? Know that a god bestowed on him eloquent speech." The cedar, the cypress, the palm, the olive, and fig-tree, the birds that inhabit them, and the garden flowers, are never wanting in these musky verses, and are always named with effect. "The willows," he says, "bow themselves to every wind, out of shame for their unfruitfulness." We may open anywhere on a floral catalogue. "By breath of beds of roses drawn, I found the grove in the morning pure, In the concert of the nightingales My drunken brain to cure. "With unrelated glance I looked the rose in the eye: The rose in the hour of gloaming Flamed like a lamp hard-by. "She was of her beauty proud. And prouder of her youth, The while unto her flaming heart The bulbul gave his truth. "The sweet narcissus closed Its eye, with passion pressed; The tulips out of envy burned Moles in their scarlet breast, "The lilies white prolonged Their sworded tongue to the smell; The clustering anemones Their pretty secrets tell." Presently we have,— "All day the rain Bathed the dark hyacinths in vain, The flood may pour from morn till night Nor wash the pretty Indians white." And so onward, through many a page. This picture of the first days of Spring, from Enweri, seems to belong to Hafiz:— "O'er the garden water goes the wind alone To rasp and to polish the cheek of the wave; The fire is quenched on the dear hearthstone, But it burns again on the tulips brave." Friendship is a favourite topic of the Eastern poets, and they have matched on this head the absoluteness of Montaigne.