Ode 315

IN the rose-garden of the World, one rose

For me 's enough;

Many a fairer in that garden grows—

Mine 's fair enough;

Out in the meadow all the shade I ask

Falls from the cypress that I call my own;

O canting Sufi, take us not to task—

Leave us alone;

Weighty thy matter, but we find the stuff,

Most learned doctor, in this portly flask

Heavy enough.

After a well-spent life comes Paradise,

With palaces fair painted on the skies;

We topers know a better heaven than this:

The tavern, to our wayward thinking, is

Heaven enough.

Upon the margin of the stream we sit

And watch the world with a contented eye;

The stream glides onward and ever, and so it

As surely passes by.

Brief joy, long pain, is all the world can give;

Pore on the stream and learn this lesson rough:

If you the gain, we find the loss, to live

More than enough.

To sit with the Beloved, who could more

Ask of a world so very sad as this—

Yea, even could a happier world give more?

Ah, drive me not, Beloved, from thy door

With harsh rebuff;

For knowest thou not thy doorstep is my home?

Nor send me to some distant realm of bliss—

No knowledge crave I of the world to come,

For never I of this old world that is

Can have enough.

Union with thee! I have no other thought;

In heaven's market I 've no wish to buy:

Here I can see and handle what I 've bought—

Not so the rainbow wares of yonder sky.

It ill becomes thee, HAFIZ, to take huff

At fortune, and her fickleness proclaim;

Consider only thy resounding fame,

Thy nature fresh and simple as a spring,

And is not, HAFIZ, thy strange power to sing

Fortune enough?