Sonnets from Hafez & Other Verses

Chapter 6: 4

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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.

4

Wend I, wander I, past all worlds that be;
Ever have I wander’d or e’er the earth was made;
Urg’d like the álien áir o’er land & sea,
Sleepless as sunlight, joyless as its shade.

Not on your earth travel I; sáy not to mé
‘Cease awhile thy wandering, Ó tir’d day!’
Say not, ‘O pilgrim, rest thee; comfort thee’:
Not hére is my journey’s end, Indus nor Cathay.