Ode 14

O LOVE, how can you thus conceal your face,

Hiding it thus each lost and listening day,

And, like the moon, blessing some other place,

Leaving us watchers with no single ray

Of all that firmament that is your face;

O Lady, take some pity on our case,

Nor leave unfed our hollow starving eyes;

Shower some silver from your hidden moon

On us poor mendicants of Paradise:—

(Would, love, that I had never seen your face!

And yet—if I had never seen your face!)

For, like the angel Harut,* we are torn

With love, from morn to midnight, back to morn,

With love so burning of your sacred face

That often we grow angry we were born.

Yea! though so deep the pit and fierce with fire

Where Harut stands, there is within thy chin

A dimple-pit that I am standing in,—

A pit of wasting, white unslaked desire,—

To which the burning Babylonian sands

Where the great love-inflicted angel stands,

Burning immortally in body and soul,

Is cool as waters lapping round the pole.

O Hell within the heaven of your face!

O Love, the very perfume of the rose,

As the dew carries it about the sward,

Smiting my senses like an unseen sword,

Out from the rose-bush of your bosom blows;

And lo! the very nightingales are mad,

Frenzied with singing—just as though they had

Looked one delirious moment in your face.

O idol, do not stay too long away,

Unless you would indeed your HAFIZ kill;

Scatter the clouds of absence; do not slay

A heart so loving and so faithful still;

Be good to HAFIZ—bring him back your face.