Conserve of roses is this book of song,

With dewy tinctures of the violet

Subtly distilled and blent a life-time long,

With the years sweeter grown and sweeter yet.

'T is for this reason that the vulgar kind

Of singers envious of HAFIZ are;

Their sugar candy is not so refined—

Mere sticky sweetmeats of the cheap bazaar.

Bitterness fill his mouth for whom my songs

Are not heard honey to the ravished ear,

And dust upon his head whose malice wrongs

This limpid verse as running water clear.

How should a man blind from his mother's womb

Buy with shut eyes a maiden for his bed!

Down the long line of loveliness in bloom

The sightless dotard all in vain is led.

[Ode 596]