O SAKI, do thy task;

Into this moon-like goblet pour

The golden wine that, shining like the sun,

From out the dusky flask

Comes till my goblet bubbles o’er,

As from the clouds the dawn when night is done.

Behold my luckless heart,

So broken, so dissolved by pain,

It even flows in tears between my lashes;

And yet how can I part

With it, while still to me remain

Its shards—I wait till it is burnt to ashes.

I knew long, long ago,

Your promises were less than naught,

I blotted them for ever from my mind.

Why was I born to know

An age above all others fraught

With love ungrateful and with fate unkind?

But grasp thy joy; who knows,

Makhfi, what may to thee befall?

The firm foundations of the earth may shake,

The breeze that blows

May, if this empty life be all,

The bubble of our vain existence break.