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Sonnets from Hafez & Other Verses

Chapter 20: 18
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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.

18

When thou art gone, & when are gone all those
That knew thee & that loved thy living grace,
Merged in the formless flood whence all arose,
When thou hast passed, & of thy life no trace
Remaineth, nor remembrancer to say
‘Such was he, such his form, his voice, his face’,
In that new time shall rise, untouched by thee,
The eddying circles still, & pass away;
Full many a spring shall turn to winter dree,
& morn to nightfall, & life’s human day
Shall change from youth’s bright hope to darkling pain,
When thy young life in life’s hard war is slain,
When thou art gone, & I, & our strong love
Which now Time’s change doth but more changeless prove.