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Sonnets from Hafez & Other Verses

Chapter 18: 16
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About This Book

A compact collection of lyric sonnets and short poems ranging from intimate meditations to more formal exercises. Many pieces probe impermanence, longing, and the pursuit of beauty, alternating quiet elegies on loss and weariness with assertions of resilience, desire, and contemplative rest. The final sequence adapts and reimagines Persian odes, evoking Hafez’s spirit rather than literal translation. Poetic forms shift between sonnet-like structures and freer lyrics, unified by musical diction, images of nature and wandering, and a tone that balances elegiac restraint with vivid sensory detail.

16

For sake of these two splendours do the wise
Set store on riches, & for these alone:
For these two glories only do they prize
Power & majesty of kingly throne:
Or this: to succour friendship in distress,
To comfort humble sorrow, nor despise
To cheer the joyless heart of weariness,
To guard & aid whom fortune doth oppress
That he to life’s glad kingdom be restor’d
(& thus their monument of thanks they raise
More high than pomp’s vain pinnacle of praise),
Or this: to forge therefrom a trenchant sword
Whereat shall poltroon evil cower & fly,
& smite Hell’s fiends of foulness that they die.