FROM THE PERSIAN OF HAFIZ.
215
Life and silver spend thou freely
If thou honorest the soul.
Haste into the other life;
All is vain 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 wineglass made of ice;
Wake the torpid heart with wine.
Every clod of loam beneath 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.
