Anacreon was borne on the crest of the wave that was sweeping on to the sublime heights of Greek culture. And Hafiz, who wrote in _the divine, high piping Pehlevi_ of old Omar, _the language of heroes_, crowns the crest of the great age of Persian lyric poetry. Anacreon is product of soft, sensuous Ionia, home of art and song. Hafiz is product of the mystic imagination of India, of her unreckoned centuries of culture and meditation, and the dominant clear thinking wisdom of Persia. Tu Fu was the mental product of three thousand years of intensive cultivation. Heine is product of the prophetic fury and eloquence of Israel and the grace of France. Heine and Hafiz had no little in common. They are to be added to the list of inspired teachers who have come out of Asia. Each was born into a received religion, but neither bore its limitation nor its restraint. Each was receptively tolerant of the religion of others, while having none of his own. Heine said proudly: _I am the freest man since Goethe!_ Hafiz said equally proudly, in his Rubaiyat: “Only he is happy who draws inspiration from all things beautiful just so long as he shall be permitted to live!” Heine loved the Orient. He longed for it. Heine has written a lyric of a pine in the north girdled with snow and ice, dreaming of a palm in the Orient. Like Gautier he dreamed of life under a bluer sky, its splendor of light. He read and loved the poets of Persia, Hafiz, Firdusi, Rûmi, Nizami. Schlegel was just telling the German world of that day of the literary treasures of Asia. In Heine he found a receptive listener. The oriental blood in his veins answered to call of the Persian poets. He, too, was of the East. At the same time both Heine and Hafiz are modern, because of their free, their inquiring souls. No other writers have so eloquently expressed grief at the vanity of life. The lyric poets of other races and ages have not had their tragic fire, power of denunciation, nor their philosophic depth. None have so rebelled against life’s briefness, its inexorableness. None have so sounded hollowness of all things human. At the same time the mind of each has been rainbow-prismed with joy. It is people of Asiatic blood who are capable of transitions from grief to joy. The fog bound lands of Europe can not shelter such chameleon-like changefulness. The throb of warring ages in which they lived was in their blood. It beat in their verses. It modeled their measures. They were indebted to its storm, its stress for vivid vitality. And they were indebted likewise for warmer blood. Great lyric poets must come of impassioned, Asiatic races. Something hinders their European brothers, binds their utterance. They can not make of their souls a torch of joy to light a moment. They lack the passionate conviction that makes them great.