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Sonnets from Hafez & Other Verses

Chapter 32: 29
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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.

29

She went.—O whither too, O one true love,
Went my sad heart, thou knowest. Lo my prayer
Followeth thee, & faith that nought may move.
With prayer I came, & now with pleading strong
I leave thee, that my flinchless trust thou share;
So shall God aid us, who to him belong.
Though all earth censure me, by Heaven I swear,
Though tyranny me test with trial untold,
No torments shall enwaver me, nor fear.
Though pleasure her most dazzling joys forth hold,
& luring musics to enravish me,
Thee only see I, thee hear, only thee
I follow:—thou who trav’lest love’s long road
Knowest that there no rest is, nor abode.