The heroic and the didactic are, however, not the only forms in which the genius of Persian poetry loved to clothe itself. From the earliest times there were poets who sung of love and of wine, of youth and of nature, with no thought of drawing a moral, or illustrating a tale. From the times of Rudagi and the Samanide princes (tenth century), these poets of sentiment sang their songs and charmed the ears of their hearers. Even Firdusi showed, in some of his minor poems, that joyous look into and upon the world which is the soul of all lyric poetry. But of all the Persian lyric poets, Shams al-Din Mohammed Háfiz has been declared by all to be the greatest. Though the storms of war and the noise of strife beat all about his country and even disturbed the peace of his native place--no trace of all this can be found in the poems of Háfiz--as though he were entirely removed from all that went on about him, though seeing just the actual things of life. He was, to all appearance, unconcerned: glad only to live and to sing. At Shiraz he was born; at Shiraz he died. Only once, it is recorded, did he leave his native place, to visit the brother of his patron in Yezd. He was soon back again: travel had no inducement for him. The great world outside could offer him nothing more than his wonted haunts in Shiraz. It is further said that he put on the garb of a Dervish; but he was altogether free of the Dervish's conceit. "The ascetic is the serpent of his age" is a saying put into his mouth. He had in him much that resembled Omar Khayyám; but he was not a philosopher. Therefore, in the East at least, his "Divan" is more popular than the Quatrains of Omar; his songs are sung where Omar's name is not heard. He is substantially a man of melody--with much mannerism, it is true, in his melody--but filling whatever he says with a wealth of charming imagery and clothing his verse in delicate rhythms. Withal a man, despite his boisterous gladsomeness and his overflowing joy in what the present has to offer, in whom there is nothing common, nothing low. "The Garden of Paradise may be pleasant," he tells us, "but forget not the shade of the willow-tree and the fair margin of the fruitful field." He is very human; but his humanity is deeply ethical in character.