The fire of love I for my idol know
Within my bosom hides,
As in the mountain 'neath its crust of snow
The flame abides.

Long have I yearned in vain to kiss her feet,
I lay my weary head
Down in the dust, that thus my lips may greet
Where she may tread.

No wealth have I, but like the moth I live:
Since love demands a price,
I, like the moth, have but my life to give
In sacrifice.

How has my bird-like soul been stricken low,
Pierced to the very heart!
My love has used instead of bolt and bow
A deadlier dart.

How long will she thus stand unveiled before me,
Shrinking and shy in maidenly distress,
How long, my dazzled eyes, can ye contemplate
Her blinding loveliness!

No rest is for my heart by love tormented,
It cannot even win the peace of death;
How long shall it endure with resignation
The pain it suffereth!

Like shifting shadows come the great and mighty,
And live their splendid day, and hurry past;
And who can tell how long the changing pageant
Of fleeting life shall last!

O look on me, unhappy Asif, driven

If you should meet the Loved One as you stray,
O give my letter secretly to her,
Then haste away
And do not tell my name, O Messenger.

O Morning Winds that from the garden blow,
Should you meet one like me forlorn and sad,
On him bestow
The peace and solace I have never had.

O Eyes that weep and weep unsatisfied,
That shed such floods, yet never find relief,
O stem your tide
Lest you should drown the world in seas of grief.

She need not have one anxious doubt of me,
She need not fear my further wanderings—

That rogue called Love having left me,
How cold snow feels to me!

Like the buoy that floats in the harbour,
Now high and now dropping low,
Is my heart that love has tortured
When I watch you come and go.

Praised more than can be told
in the swaying pleasure groves:
only the eye is pleasured —
by seeing just a little,
the other catches the whole heart,
and the other
seeing one as another (and being lonely)
calls out.

Though new it seems familiar —
did this heart invite it?
The world changed, and perhaps
painfully awakened this forgotten life.
Shiva, perhaps,
to adorn Uma,
with one glance
dreamed this earth to be their home.

The world must turn to a drop
and disappear
in overflowing eyes.

And [a hue] of honey-paleness overspreads the lovely countenance .

I love delicacy, and for me Love has the sun's splendour and beauty .

Love is a secret which cannot be revealed,
But by two hundred curtains it cannot be concealed.

That idol with heart of stone and ear-ornaments of silver
Hath deprived me of fortitude, power, and reason.

For she is an image of piercing looks, delicate mien, in beauty like a houri,
A soft companion, bright as the moon, lovely, and robed in the grace-tunic.

Were my very bones even to putrefy,
The love I have for her could not be forgotten by my soul.

Her bosom and shoulders, her bosom and shoulders, her bosom and shoulders
Have deprived me of my heart and religion, my heart and religion:

Thy cure, thy cure, O HAFIZ!