{"collection":"Islam","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/pdh/pdh47.htm","path":"isl/pdh/pdh47.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/isl/pdh/pdh47.htm","text":"Poems from the Divan of Hafiz, by Getrude Lowthian Bell, [1897]\nStanza 1.\u2014This poem has been expounded to me as a description of the poet's quest for love. In an allegory he shows how he looked for it in vain from that image of earthly devotion, the nightingale; he warns men that it comes not but by humiliation and sorrow; he questions the magic garden, but its breezes cannot answer him; finally, he concludes that love is not that which lies upon the lips of men, and calls upon the Cup-bearer to silence their idle talk with the wine of divine knowledge.\nStanza 2.\u2014The Garden of Irem was planted by the mythical King Shedad, the son of Ad, the grandson of Irem, who was himself the son of Shem. The tribe of Ad settled in the sandy deserts near Aden, where Ad began the building of a great city which his son completed. Round his palace Shedad planted a wonderful garden which was intended to rival in beauty the Garden of Eden. \"When it was finished he set out with a great attendance to take a view of it, but when they were come within a day's journey of the place they were all destroyed by a terrible noise from heaven. . . . The city, they tell us, is still standing in the deserts of Aden, being preserved by Providence as a monument of divine justice, though it be invisible, unless very rarely, when God permits it to be seen, a favour one Colabah pretended to have received in the reign of the Khalif Moawiyah, who, sending for him to know the truth of the matter, Colabah related his whole adventure: that, as he was seeking a camel he had lost, he found himself on a sudden at the gates of this city, and entering it, saw not one inhabitant, at which being terrified, he stayed no longer than to take with him some fine stones which he showed the Khalif.\"\u2014Sale's Koran.\nSudi says that Hafiz composed this poem in a beautiful garden belonging to Shah Shudja, and called by him the Baghi-Irem, after Shedad's legendary Paradise.\n\"Il y avait jadis en Perse un grand roi nomm\u00e9 Djem ou Djemshid. It r\u00e9gna sept cents ans; je ne saurai vous dire \u00e0 quelle date au juste, mais \u2019tant qu\u2019il regna, it n\u2019y eut dans son empire ni mort, ni maladie, ni vicillesse, et tous les hommes marchaient dans la taille de jouvenceaux: de quinze ans; it n\u2019y avait ni chaleur, ni froideur, et jamais ne se dess\u00e9chaient les eaux ni les plantes.\u2019 Mais le pauvre Djem n\u2019avait point la t\u00eate solide, et, comme it faisait des immortels, il se crut Dieu et voulut \u00eatre ador\u00e9. Aussit\u00f4t, le Fari Yazdan, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire la gloire royale qui vient de Dieu, l\u2019abandonna; un serpent \u00e0 trois t\u00e9tes, nomm\u00e9 Zohab, vint de l\u2019Arabie et lui prit son tr\u00e9ne; it s\u2019enfuit dans l\u2019Inde et y resta chach\u00e9 mille ans durant; puis un beau jour, s\u2019\u00e9tant aventur\u00e9 hors de sa retraite, il fut livr\u00e9 au serpent, qui le scia en deux avec une ar\u00eate de poisson. Entre autres splendeurs, le roi Djemshid, au temps de sa splendeur, poss\u00e9-dait une coupe magique o\u00f9 il voyait tout l\u2019univers et tout ce qui s\u2019y passe. Certains savants pr\u00e9tendent que cette coupe \u00e9tait le soleil qui voit toute chose; d\u2019autres, que c\u2019\u00e9tait un globe terrestre mis au courant, et il me souvient qu\u2019il y a deux ans, prenant le th\u00e9 dans un caf\u00e9 de Stamboul avec un sage d\u2019Isfahan, nomm\u00e9 Habib, la conversation tomba de la tasse de th\u00e9 \u00e0 la coupe de Djemshid, et Habib, me mettant le doigt au front, me dit: Djam-i-Djemshid, dil-i-agah: \"la coupe de Djemshid c\u2019est le c\u0153ur de l\u2019homme de science.\"\u2014Darmsteter, \"Lettres sur l\u2019Inde.\"\nA few miles from Peshawar, Darmsteter goes on to relate, there is a dried-up pond called the Talab i Djemshid, into which the King is said to have cast his magic cup. The head man of the village told the French traveller that a knife had been discovered there bearing this inscription: \"This pond was dug by me, Djemshid, five hundred years before the Hejra.\" \"Elle n'a pas \u00e9t\u00e9 retrouv\u00e9e, la coupe de Djemshid,\" adds Darmsteter, \"non plus que la coupe du roi de Thul\u00e9, c\u2019est pour \u00e7a qu\u2019il n\u2019y a plus parmi les hommes ni science, ni amour.\"\nDjemshid is supposed to have built Persepolis. There is a legend that his cup was found buried in its foundations, and that it was formed of an enormous turquoise. It is said that he was the first to drink wine, and that he recommended it to his subjects as a health-giving beverage. He, too, was the father of chemistry and the possessor of the philosopher's stone.","title":"Poems from the Divan of Hafiz: Notes: II","type":"page"}