The breeze of my genius has diffused the odour of roses
over my banquet,
My cup has been filled to overflowing with the wine of
delight;
I have sat laughing, like a cup of sparkling wine,
While the cupbearer, like the bottle, stood behind me
Drinking deeper draughts than either I or my good for-
tune,
My days have been good, but my means of spending them
better.
My gardener has been happy, like thy reign,
For my basil plant has grown freely.
These four thousand jewels of pure water,*
Which I have stirred up with the water which is like fire,
Accept, for the lustre of the gems is all thine,
They were produced that they might be scattered round
thy crown;
If I have scattered more than I have said
I have then reckoned my harvest without any deficiency.
From this ocean which, in its turmoil, rears its head to the
highest heaven
Gems bubble forth on the crest of each wave.
Thus employed, in the art of arranging mystic sayings,
My speech has set itself to no mean employment.
Every pithy phrase with which my pen has charged itself
Has been brought by my heart from distant recesses.
My pen points out to me the road to inscrutable mysteries
Where a mountain of meaning best appears,
Hidden under phrases slight as a blade of grass.
This book is illuminated with my heart's blood.
Its allegories are filled to overflowing with true wisdom.
If its melodies be chanted in the mountains
Their sound will dance among the grains of flowing sand.*

I have woven from my swiftly travelling breath
Sacred threads for the Brahmans of the nine monasteries.
My thought, which stirs up mystic truths,
Is an ocean which produces gems from its waters.
This writing, which brings to the light the essence of all
things,
Is but half the shadow of my pen.
Every truth contained in it is as water in the stream,
Every knotty saying is as the curl in lovely hair.
This poem is a pearl of which the price may be fixed
For it shows forth the felicity of both worlds;
This lovely idol from the workshop of Āẕar* received
Its adornment in the month of Āẕar,*
In the thirty-ninth year of the Imperial reign, ³⁰⁸
In the new Divine Era,*
When I reckoned up the years of the Hijrī era
I computed them to be a thousand and three alifs.*
This garden, which is full of thy perfume
Is but one rose of the plant of thy boundless wealth.
I have the prospect of the joy of another cup
In laying out four gardens more.*
If love thus consumes me entirely,
I shall make moonlight shine from my ashes.
The transparent glass of my heart is melted,
And I will give it, as a mirror, into the hands of the
assembly.

The story-tellers of the market-place base their stories on
their dreams;
But I have awoken from such stories.
This is the arena of those who have traversed the heavens
And in it valiant heroes are to be descried;
Scribes whose very breath breathes magic, with the points
of their pens
Have completed the adornment of this epic.
I also, for the sake of making a name in the world,
Have with my skill in words made a talisman.
I melted down both my heart and my tongue
In displaying this picture to the world.
When my genius scattered its wit into pen,
The pen poured the water of life into the inkstand;
The Messiah saw musk in a moist bladder
And dried it with His breath.
Is this an inkstand filled with ambergris,
Or a censer emitting smoke of ambergris?
When this lofty dome (the sky) became my cradle
The year was 954 (A.D. 1547).*
Now that I have spent forty-nine years in this monastery
I have passed through the seventy-two sects (of Islām)
My meeting-place has been in the idol-temples of India,
The fire-temples of Persia have been in my heart.
With a hundred incantations and magical devices
Have I cleaned from the mirror of the king's heart the scum
of rust.*
This day, among the great tribe of the ages
The sky beat the naubat for me on the roof;*

Eloquence, that King who has been my surety,
Has enthroned himself on my tongue.
I have become both the equal of the amīrs
And the prince of poets.
In every direction I go, uttering my wise words,
The ranks of mystic significations bow the knee to me.
Since love entered into my mind ³⁰⁹
I have become the adorner of the diadem which is over the
nine thrones of the heavens.
The valiant swordsmen of the kingdom of rhetoric,
The archers of the battle of pretensions,
When they cast their eyes on my forces,
Cast down their shields in the field before me.
My pen, on account of my great fame
Writes as my autograph, ‘He who is mighty in speech’;
‘The pride of the philosophers’ is the writing on my fore-
head.
‘The greatest* of the poets’ is the device on my seal.
The heavenly Key has opened
To my thoughts the door of mystic significations.
When my breath gave birth to this poem
Khiẓr* came, and bestowed on me his length of days.
If the door has been opened before me
My poems have also been endued with long life.
If I reckon up all that both worlds can give
I find it to be but dust from the stour* which I have raised.
This pen, which has traversed the whole of my poem,
Drives its splinters under the nails of bad penmanship.*
See now the drift of this book, which shall last for ever,
See boundless wisdom concealed in (boundless) love.

Those who are not dumb before this splendour
Are men who are not admitted to the privy chamber of
imagination.
As for him whose business is with words,
Let the age endow him with justice.
It is the practice of those of meagre wit
Ever to gibe at their contemporaries:
What of those who have fallen asleep, wrapped in the sheet
of the earth?
Knowest thou what they said of the men of their time?
And those who shall obscure my light with smoke
Will I afflict in their eyes (with their smoke).*
Moreover, a time will come when I shall be no more,
And shall no longer be the nightingale of this garden;
Then those who struck a thorn into my rose
Shall sigh for sorrow over my shrine.
O thou who hast poured the lees of the draught into my
pure wine
Pluck but a rose of the spring of justice,
Or else take my goods at my valuation;
Look to their worth and consider yourself fortunate in me.
In the morning, when I sing in this meadow
My melodies shed a hundred gardens of flowers.
I am humble as dust in the path of true appraisers
Who this day, despite the ungrateful,
³¹⁰ When they opened this treasure from my stock.
Cast on it a glance which justly estimated it
And looked (with pity) on other unfortunates.
They, like the ocean, teemed with gems
And the diver who brought the gems to the surface
delighted in their commendation.
Art is intensely jealous of love
For I have compounded this poem with love's magic.
This pen is the source of great wonder
That from a dry reed such moist sweetness should flow.

This breath of mine is a monument to love,
For it is vapour which arises from my inward fervour.
Fayyāẓī on this incantation of thine
How long wilt thou dilate?
It is best that thou should'st bring thy tale to a close
Before thou becomest, thyself, no more than a tale.
O thou consumed with love restrain thy breath;
Have done with love's tale, have done!”