  All my youth’s desires are buried, Each within its narrow grave; Long ago their ghosts were ferried O’er Jaihun’s enchanted wave; Wild ambitions bright and brave, Loves that made me serve a slave, All have slipped away like snow Long ago. Stars in which my youth delighted Vanish from the heavenly band, And I wander a benighted Stranger in a stranger land; There is no one left to stand By my side or take my hand, Of the friends I worshipped so Long ago. One sweet name of all the number Haunts the chambers of my brain, One sweet shape disturbs my slumber, Loved too well and loved in vain. Ah, Ferangis! give again Half the pleasure, all the pain, That my boyhood used to know Long ago. These are dreams: I must remember That my youthful days are dead, That the rigours of December Grizzle e’en a poet’s head. Gone is gone, and dead is dead, And no roses bloom as red As the roses used to blow Long ago. Though my eyes pursue the swallow As he travels towards the sun, Aged limbs refuse to follow Where the fancies lightly run. Hafiz, cease, the game is done, Life’s fantastic robe is spun; Fate marked out the way to go Long ago. You were passionate, my poet, In your manhood’s golden dawn; Seized the seed of life to sow it On the tulip-tinted lawn; Now you sit at home and yawn, Withered, grizzled, bent and drawn, By the hearth: you scorned its glow Long ago. What is left? a sigh, a shudder, For my past, and for the goal Where, a boat without a rudder, Drifts my tempest-troubled soul; Ah! death’s angel, taking toll, Shall I find within thy bowl Better wine than used to flow Long ago? |
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