Sonnets from Hafez & Other Verses

Chapter 36: 33

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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.

33

My heart the chamber of His musing is,
Mine eye the mirror of His beauty’s face,
My hand the servant of His purposes.

I, who to neither wealth nor worldly place
Incline, nor to religion’s promised ease,
Bend low beneath the burden of His grace.

Since all I have is of His bounty given,
So is my poor pride but in His proud name,
His humble service is my hoped-for Heaven.

Nor shun I men’s despite & trampling sneer,
Nor heed their slander, nor the infamous fame
Of their blind censure; nay nor do I fear

Death’s last defilement: though I pass in shame,

Bright worlds His immortality proclaim.