Sonnets from Hafez & Other Verses

Chapter 21: 19 A YOUTH

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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.

19

A YOUTH

Play thou on men as on a hárp’s stríng:
Though of themselves they lifeless are
In them thy spirit’s music shall ring.

Breathe thou in them as through a reed
Thy soul’s strong message, through them declare
To the dead world thy living need.

They are to thee as the senseless words
That embody thought’s full-felt commands;
Thy passive tools, obedient hands
To serve thy purpose, thy trusty swords:
They shall thy beauteous will express
Though they be graceless & purposeless.

Yea, live thou in men as their life’s will,

So long as life is, & good & ill.