Hafiz - The Garden of Heaven: Poems of Hafiz

Stanza 1.This poem has been expounded to me as a description of the poets 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.

Stanza 2.The 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 days 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.Sales Koran.

Sudi says that Hafiz composed this poem in a beautiful garden belonging to Shah Shudja, and called by him the Bagh-i-Irem, after Shedads legendary Paradise.

Il y avait jadis en Perse un grand roi nomm Djem ou Djemshid. Il rgna sept cents ans; je ne saurai vous dire quelle date au juste, mais tant quil rgna, il ny eut dans son empire ni mort, ni maladie, ni vieillesse, et tous les hommes marchaient dans la taille de jouvenceaux de quinze ans; il ny avait ni chaleur, ni froideur, et jamais ne se desschaient les eaux ni les plantes. Mais le pauvre Djem navait point la tte solide, et, comme il faisait des immortels, il se crut Dieu et voulut tre ador. Aussitt, le Fari Yazdan, cest--dire la gloire royale qui vient de Dieu, labandonna; un serpent trois ttes, nomm Zohab, vint de lArabie et lui prit son trne; il senfuit dans lInde et y resta chach mille ans durant; puis un beau jour, stant aventur hors de sa retraite, il fut livr au serpent, qui le scia en deux avec une arte de poisson. Entre autres splendeurs, le roi Djemshid, au temps de sa splendeur, poss-dait une coupe magique o il voyait tout lunivers et tout ce qui sy passe. Certains savants prtendent que cette coupe tait le soleil qui voit toute chose; dautres, que ctait un globe terrestre mis au courant, et il me souvient quil y a deux ans, prenant le th dans un caf de Stamboul avec un sage dIsfahan, nomm Habib, la conversation tomba de la tasse de th la coupe de Djemshid, et Habib, me mettant le doigt au front, me dit: Djam-i-Djemshid, dil-i-agah: la coupe de Djemshid cest le cur de lhomme de science.Darmsteter, Lettres sur lInde.

A 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 na pas t retrouve, la coupe de Djemshid, adds Darmsteter, non plus que la coupe du roi de Thul, cest pour a quil ny a plus parmi les hommes ni science, ni amour.

Djemshid 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 philosophers stone.