Ode 491

WHAT ails thee, Saki! Wine, for God's love, bring!

Whoever saw an empty cup in spring!

Hast thou forgot this is the drinking season?

The rose is back again: what better reason

To fill the cup, and fill the cup again!

Mind you, we 'll have no drinking out of season!

But not to drink in spring is arrant treason—

So fill the cup, and fill the cup again!

What ails thee, Saki! Wine, for God's love, bring!

Whoever saw an empty cup in spring!

'Fore heaven, with all this piety and fast,

But it is good to get a drink at last!

My very heart-strings shrivelled are and shrunken;

I wonder, Saki, that they did n't crack.

O! but I 'll soon feel better when I 've drunken:

Now life begins again—for spring is back.

The very Sufi who but yesterday

Enlarged upon the error of my way,

Himself so drunken is with the good spring—

I saw him to the winds his virtues fling,

And heard him all his piety unsay.

What ails thee, lover! Where is pipe and string?

Whoever saw so long a face in spring!

Only a day or two the rose is ours,

Only a little while Musella's bowers;

Lover, make haste some smooth-cheeked girl to choose,

And in thy kissing not a moment lose:

Nothing but faces fade so fast as flowers.

Music, O minstrel! Wine, O Saki, pour!

The rose will soon be gone, though we remain;

Soon, ah! so soon, the merry spring be o'er—

So fill the cup, and fill the cup again!

Mark thou the Saki's cheek reflected there—

Was ever anything on earth so fair!

What ails thee, lover! Where is pipe and string?

Whoever saw so long a face in spring!

Minstrel, when you before the sultan sing,

Thy song must be of HAFIZ' fashioning:

No other songs are worthy of a king.