Not Ever in Pastures Green

In “pastures green?”  Not always, sometimes He

Who knoweth best, in kindness leadeth me

In weary ways, where heavy shadows be.

And “by still waters?”  No, not always so;

Oft-times the heavy tempests round me blow,

And o’er my soul the waves and billows go.

But when the storms beat loudest, and I cry

Aloud for help, the Master standeth by,

And whispers to my soul, “Lo, it is I!”

So, where he leads me, I can safely go,

And in the blest hereafter I shall know

Why, in His wisdom, he had led me so.

Henry H. Barry

Unendurable

What a world were this; how unendurable its weight, if they whom death had sundered did not meet again!

-       Southey[1]

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Robert Southey (1774-1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called “Lake Poets,” and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843. Although his fame tends to be eclipsed by that of his contemporaries and friends William Wordsworth (see footnote 46) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (see footnote 134), Southey’s verse enjoys enduring popularity. Moreover, he was a prolific letter writer, literary scholar, essay writer, historian and biographer. His biographies include the life and works of John Bunyan, John Wesley, William Cowper, Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson. The latter has rarely been out of print since its publication in 1813 and was adapted for the screen in the 1926 British film Nelson. He was also a renowned Portuguese and Spanish scholar, translating a number of works of those two languages into English and writing both a History of Brazil (part of his planned History of Portugal which was never completed) and a History of the Peninsular War. Perhaps his most enduring contribution to literary history is the immortal children’s classic, The Story of the Three Bears, the original Goldilocks story, which first saw print in 1834 in Southey’s novel The Doctor.  (Source: Wikipedia)

Hope On

Too oft, in haste, we only scan

Some minor part of Heaven’s great plan,

And so misjudge God’s love to man.

O souls that grieve!  O hearts that ache!

Tho’ dark the hour, fresh courage take;

The night will pass; the morn will break.

Eyes were not meant for useless tears;

Heaven’s ways are wise thru all the years;

Nor can they fall, despite our fears.

Wars yet shall cease; the sword must rust;

The sons of pride lie low in dust;

Our God still reigns; all good and just.

From earth’s dark scenes of grief and woe,

In ways most sure, some good will grow;

How great that good, long years will show.

-       Pastor J. Clark, Selma, East Hants

The Mysteries

We know not what it is, this sleep so deep and still;

The folded hands, the awful calm, the cheek so pale and chill;

The lids that will not lift again, though we may call and call;

The strange white solitude of peace that settles over all.

We know not what it means, the desolate heart-pain;

The dread to take our daily way, and walk in it again;

We know not to what other sphere the loved who leave us go,

Nor while we’re left to wonder still, nor why we do not know.

But this we know: Our loved and dead, if they should come this day—

Should come and ask us, “What is life?” not one of us could say.

Life is a mystery as deep as ever death can be;

Yet, oh, how dear it is to us, this life we live and see!

Then might they say—these vanished ones—and blessed is the thought:

“So death is sweet to us beloved!  Though we may show you naught;

We may not to the quick reveal the mystery of death—

Ye cannot tell us, if ye would, the mystery of breath.”

The child who enters life comes not with knowledge or intent,

So these who enter death must go as little children sent.

Nothing is known!  But I believe that God is overhead,

And as life is to the living so death is to the dead.

-       Mary Mapes Dodge[1]

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[1] Mary Mapes Dodge was born in 1831 to Professor James Jay Mapes and Sophia Furman in New York City. She acquired a good education under private tutors. In 1851 she married the lawyer William Dodge. Within the next four years she gave birth to two sons, James and Harrington. In 1857, William faced serious financial difficulties and left his family in 1858. A month later his body was found; he had apparently drowned. Mary became a widow.

In 1859 she began writing and editing, working with her father to publish two magazines, the Working Farmer and the United States Journal. Within a few years she had great success with a collection of short stories, The Irvington Stories (1864), and a novel was solicited. Dodge then wrote Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates, which became an instant bestseller.

Later in life she was an associate editor of Hearth and Home, edited by Harriet Beecher Stowe. She had charge of the household and children’s departments of that paper for many years. She became an editor in her own right with the children’s St. Nicholas Magazine, for she was able to solicit stories from a number of well-known writers including Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, and Robert Louis Stevenson. St. Nicholas became one of the most successful magazines for children during the second half of the nineteenth century, with a circulation of almost 70,000 children. Dodge died in 1905 and is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery, Hillside, New Jersey. (Source: Wikipedia)

The Cost of Life

“To live is always to be hurt in some way,” said a young voice recently.  It was the half-resentful, half-wondering voice of one still new to the experiences of existence, and questioning their justice.

The statement is true, and the more fully alive one is, the more keenly are the hurts felt.  Every joy brings with it its possible price of suffering.  Every love opens a door to sorrow, every gift brings its weight of responsibility; wider knowledge brings the larger drain upon sympathy.  The higher one rises in the scale of being, the greater becomes not only the capacity for joy, but also the twin capacity for suffering, but who would choose to be a clod to avoid feeling, a block of marble to escape the pain of a living soul?

To a Friend in Sorrow

Dear friend I know that o’er your path

That once was fair and bright

A shadow has fallen dark and deep

And shut out the golden light.

I know that you gaze on a pictured face

Through eyes that are dim with tears,

That the glowing hopes that were rosy hued

Are gone from the coming years.

The birds still warble the same sweet notes

And the sky is just as blue;

The flowers till shed the same perfume

But they’re not as sweet to you.

I know that you gaze on a pictured face

And the nights are long and drear;

That you long for the old familiar step,

And the loving voice to hear.

Ah, Life is never the same again

And my heart is sore for you;

The cup is bitter my lips have pressed

And the shadows are ‘round me too.

But we know that over the swelling tide

And safe in his tender care,

Away from sorrow, and care, and fret,

Our loved ones await us there.

And the sorrows we suffer here below

And the cords of love that’s riven

Is only the Father’s way to guide

Our wandering steps to Heaven.

-       Beth

There is No Death

There is no death!  The stars go down,

To rise upon some fairer shore;

And bright in Heaven’s jeweled crown

They shine for evermore.

There is no death!  The dust we tread

Shall change beneath the Summer showers

To golden grain, or mellow fruit,

Or rainbow-tinted flowers.

The granite rocks disorganize

To feed the hungry moss they bear;

The forest leaves drink daily life

From out the viewless air.

There is no death!  The leaves may fall,

The flowers may pall, and fade away—

They only wait through wintry hours

The coming of the May.

There is no death!  An angel form

Walks o’er the earth with silent tread;

He bears our best loved things away,

And then we call them “dead.”

He leaves our hearts all desolate—

He plucks our fairest, sweetest flowers:

Transplanted into bliss, they now

Adorn immortal bowers.[1]

            - Bulwer[2]

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[1] The poem quoted here was evidently quite meaningful to Clare.  She underlined the portions underlined above in pencil, and the last selection in pen as well.  This seems to indicate she revisited it and pondered it on multiple occasions.  The poem actually has ten stanzas; only six are included in this excerpt.

[2] This designates the English poet Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton (1831-1891) but is a misattribution.  The poem was written by the American poet John Luckey McCreery (1835-1906).  This mistake was likely not the fault of the periodical from which Clare clipped the poem.  This excerpt from Famous Poems from Bygone Days by Martin Gardner (1995) chronicles the confusion in its biographical sketch of John’s life:

John McCreery was born in Sweden, New York, the son of a Methodist minister.  His career in journalism took him to Delhi, Iowa, in 1857, where he bought a weekly newspaper that he edited until the end of the Civil War. After working for newspapers in Dubuque, he became a clerk with the Committee on Indian Affairs, Washington, D. C., where he later held other government jobs.

There Is No Death, in ten stanzas, with McCreery’s byline, first appeared in Arthur’s Home Journal 22 (July 1863): 41. Then a funny thing happened. A newspaper reprinted the poem, crediting it to one “E. Bulmer,” probably a fictitious name. Other editors assumed that “Bulmer” was a wrong spelling of “Bulwer,” which they took to be Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer, England’s poet who used the pen name Owen Meredith!

McCreery’s poem was soon reprinted everywhere—in anthologies, newspapers, magazines, hymnbooks and school readers—as the work of Meredith. Even Burton Stevenson, who devotes a chapter to this in Famous Single Poems, credited the poem to Meredith in his earlier Home Book of Verse.

No other poem was more recited at funerals and burial sites than There Is No Death.  Poor McCreery spent the rest of his life struggling vainly to prove the poem was indeed his. He included it as the first poem in his Songs of Toil and Triumph (1883), where he revised it heavily, and expanded it to sixteen stanzas.  Stevenson considers the revised version “vastly inferior” to the original, and finds little merit in any of the other poems in the book.

McCreery died in Duluth, Minnesota, after an appendicitis operation, and was buried in Glenwood Cemetery, in the nation’s capital. The first stanza of his once-admired poem is on his modest tombstone. 

The Weaver

I sat at my loom in silence,

Facing the westering sun;

The warp was rough and tangled

And the threads unevenly run.

Impatient I pulled at the fibers—

They snapped and flew from my hands;

Weary and faint and sore-hearted

I gathered the broken strands.

I had beautiful color to work with—

White, blue like heaven above,

And tangled in all the meshes

Were the golden threads of love;

But the colors were dulled by my handling,

The pattern was faded and gray,

That once to my eager seeming

Shone fairer than flowers of May.

But, alas! Not the half of my pattern

Was finished at set of sun.

What should I say to the Master

When I heard him call, “Is it done?”

And I threw down my shuttle in sorrow

(I had worked through the livelong day)

And I lay down to slumber in darkness,

Too weary even to pray.

In my dreams a vision of splendor,

An angel, shining-faced,

With gentle and tender finger

The work of the weavers traced.

He stooped with a benediction

O’er the loom of my neighbor near,

For the threads were smooth and even

And the pattern perfect and clear.

Then I waited in fear and trembling

As he stood by my tangled skein,

For the look of reproach and pity

That I knew would add to my pain.

Instead, with a thoughtful aspect

He turned his gaze upon me,

And I knew he saw the fair picture

Of my work as I hoped it would be.

And with touch divine of his finger

He traced my faint copy anew,

Transforming the clouded colors

And letting the pattern shine through.

And I knew in that moment of waiting,

While his look pierced my very soul through,

I was judged not so much by my doing

As by what I had striven to do.

A Line o’ Cheer

March

In Troubled Waters

Sometimes when trouble pesters me

I find some comfort in the thought

That I’m a sailor on the sea

In some great raging tempest caught,

But if my ship is staunch and true,

Despite the hurricane and blast,

I’ll come in triumph sailing thru,

Into the harbor safe at last.

Love Shall Save Us All

O pilgrim, comes the night so fast?

Let not the dark thy heart appall.

Though loom the shadows vague and fast,

For love shall save us all.

There is no hope but this to see

Through tears that gather fast and fall;

Too great to perish love must be,

And love shall save us all.

Have patience with our loss and pain,

Our troubles’ space of days so small;

We shall not reach our arms in vain,

For love shall save us all.

O pilgrim, but a moment wait,

And we shall hear our darlings call

Beyond death’s mute and awful gate,

And love shall save us all!

-       Thaxter[1]

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[1] Celia Laighton Thaxter was born in 1836 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. When she was young her father, Thomas Laighton, lost a local election. Bitter, he purchased some islands off the coast and took a job as lighthouse keeper on an adjacent island.  For Celia, this was the beginning of a lifetime on and about the Isles of Shoal. Her father eventually opened a guest house at which some of New England’s finest writers stayed. Celia met Hawthorne, Whittier (see footnote 240), and others.  Perhaps it is no surprise she became a poet. Celia’s published collections include: Among the Isles of Shoals (1873); Poems (1871); Driftweed (1878); Poems for Children (1884); and The Cruise of the Mystery, and other Poems (1886). Celia lived on or near the islands all her adult life. She married Levi Lincoln Thaxter in 1851, and died in 1894.  (Sources: Poemhunter.com, Celia Thaxter Timeline by Norma H. Mandel, Ph.D.)

God Knows Best

Sometime, when all life’s lessons have been learned,

And sun and stars forever more have set,

The things which our weak judgments here have spurned,

The things o’er which we grieved with lashes wet,

Will flash before us out of life’s dark night,

As stars shine most in deepest tints of blue,

And we shall see how all God’s plans were right,

And how what seemed reproof was love most true.

And we shall see how, while we frown and sigh,

God’s plans go on as best for you and me.

How when we called He heeded not our cry

Because His wisdom to the end could see.

Even as prudent parents disallow,

Too much of sweet to craving babyhood,

So, God, perhaps, is keeping from us now,

Life’s richest thing because it seemeth good.

And if sometimes commingled with life’s wine,

We find the wormwood and rebel and shrink

Be sure a wiser hand than yours or mine

Pours out this portion for our lips to drink.

And if some friend we love is lying low,

Where human kisses cannot reach his face,

Oh, do not blame the loving Father so,

But bear your sorrow with obedient grace.

And you shall shortly know that lengthened breath,

Is not the richest gift God sends His friend,

But that sometimes the sable pall of death

Conceals the richest boon His love can send.

If we could push ajar the gates of life,

And stand within and all God’s workings see,

We could interpret all this doubt and strife,

And for each mystery could find the key.

But not to-day.  Then be content, poor heart.

God’s plans, like lilies, pure and white, unfold.

We must not tear the close shut leaves apart,

Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.

And if, through patient toil, we reach that land,

Where tired feet, with sandals loosed, shall rest,

Where we shall clearly know and understand,

I think that we will say, “God Knew the Best.”

            - Mary Louise Riley Smith[1]

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[1] Mary Louise Riley Smith, the author, was born in Brighton, Monroe County, New York in 1842. She was educated at Brockport (New York) Collegiate Institute. In 1869 married Albert Smith, of Springfield, Illinois, with whom she afterward removed to New York City. She published A Gift of Gentians, and other Verses (New York, 1882), and The Inn of Rest (1888). Some of her short poems, notably Tired Mothers, (see p. 258) have been widely popular.  (Source: famousamericans.net)

Be Not Afraid

“Child, dry thy tears; thy Father hears

Thy prayer, and will answer make.

Though dark the night—no ray of light—

Rise, and fresh courage take,

“He knows thy pain, and not in vain

Has been thy anguished cry,

He sees thee grieve, and will relieve

All who to Him draw nigh.

“’Twas in His love, thy faith to prove,

The answer He delayed;

How soft and clear, His voice thou’ll hear;

‘”Tis I, be not afraid.’”

Friends

Friend after friend departs;

Who hath not lost a friend?

There is no union here of hearts,

That finds not here an end.

Were this frail world our only rest,

Living or dying, none were blest.

Beyond the flight of time

Beyond the vale of death,

There surely is some blessed clime

Where life is not a breath.

Nor life’s affections transient fire,

Whose sparks fly upward to expire.

There is a world above

Where parting is unknown—

A whole eternity of love

Formed for the good alone;

And faith beholds the dying here

Translated to that happier sphere.

Thus star by star declines,

Till all are passed away.

As morning high and higher shines

To pure and perfect day;

Nor sink those stars in empty night;

They hide themselves in heaven’s own light

-       James Montgomery[1]

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[1] James Montgomery was born in 1771 in Scotland to Irish parents. His father was a Moravian minister.  When he was five, his parents left to be missionaries in Barbados, leaving him with the Moravian settlement at Gracehill in County Antrim. They died in the West Indies. At age seven, James the community sent James to Fulneck Seminary in Yorkshire. This was a bad fit. James had the soul of a poet, and poetry was prohibited at Fulneck. At the age of 16, he apprenticed himself to a baker, but it did not work out. He bounced from job to job in his late teens, and drifted from his faith.

In 1792 James began working for Joseph Gales, the publisher of the local newspaper The Sheffield Register. Gales supported some radical causes, and in 1794 fled to Germany to escape arrest. The 23 year old James took control of the paper, changed its name to The Sheffield Iris, and continued publication. For over three decades he served as editor, still supporting anti-government themes such as abolition. Twice he was jailed, but the opposition only made him more popular.

James became known for his poetry. He lectured at the Royal Society. But hymns were to become his ultimate love. In his 40s, James humbly returned to the Moravians, repentant and seeking restoration. He again attended services, and avidly supported Christian missions until his death in 1854. Today he is most remembered for his hymns—he wrote over 400. Christians today will recognize his words in Angels from the Realms of Glory, The Lord is My Shepherd, Prayer is the Soul’s Sincere Desire, and A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief.  (Sources: lectionary.org; cybercarol.org; hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com)

Silver Lining

“The cloud has a silver lining don’t forget;

and though he’s hidden, still the sun is shining yet.

Courage, instead of tears and repining.

Just bide a wee, and dinna fret.”

Response

No one is so accursed by fate,

No one so utterly desolate,

But some heart, though unknown

Responds unto his own.

-       Longfellow[1]

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[1] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American educator and poet whose works include Paul Revere’s Ride, The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy and was one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets.

Longfellow was born in 1807 in Portland, Maine and studied at Bowdoin College. After spending time in Europe he became a professor at Bowdoin and, later, at Harvard College. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1841). Longfellow retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, living the remainder of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a former headquarters of George Washington. His first wife, Mary Potter, died in 1835 after a miscarriage. His second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns from her dress catching fire. Longfellow himself died in 1882.

Longfellow predominantly wrote lyric poems which were known for their musicality and which often presented stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. (Source: Wikipedia)

Pain

Art thou weary, tender heart?  Be glad of pain

In sorrow sweetest virtues grow, as flowers in rain

God watches, and thou wilt have sun,

When clouds their perfect work have done.

“We Are So Few!”

The long, blest chain is broken—

So many links have softly dropped from sight;

So many names are now in sadness spoken—

Names once so bright.

“We are so few!”

We count them on our fingers.

One, two, a half dozen left to cheer;

And then in faltering tones our converse lingers

On those, as dear.

“We are so few!”

And kisses seem more holy,

And partings touch the soul to deeper woe;

Stern hearts grow gentle; pride becometh lowly,

When we say so!

“We are so few!”

And eyes seek signs of failing;

Age groweth dark when years take one by one!

Death fills the air.  A sense of dull bewailing

Blots out the sun.

But hark!  It seems to us an angel speaketh;

“We are so many!”  Aye, so many, there!

A dawn upon the grey horizon breaketh—

A day most fair.

We count them!  Not by fingers, but by heart-beats,

By thrills of joy and hope, by wings of faith!

The chain is drawn together—softly parts—meets—

This is not death!

They keep our places for us.  Some day gladly

Shall fall on us God’s fresh, immortal dew;

In heaven we nevermore can murmur sadly,

“We are so few!”

Cora Linn Daniels[1]

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[1] Cora Linn Morrison Daniels was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1852. She was educated in the grammar school of Malden in that state. She studied under a private tutor for two years, and then went to Delacove Institute, near Philadelphia. She returned to her home state and finished her education at Dean Academy in Franklin, and upon graduating married Joseph H. Daniels of that town. Cora published her first poem in 1874, then went to work as a newspaper writer at the Golden Rule in Boston. Next she became the New York correspondent for the Hartford, Connecticut Daily Times, with a special emphasis on dramatic and literary criticism. 

Cora seems to have had a fascination for the mystical; her first novel, Sardia (1891) featured a heroine delivered from the influence of a female vampire. She published articles in The Metaphysical Magazine. Her favorite work, What Is to Be (1893) was subtitled Psychical Philosophy. In 1903, she and C. M. Stevens published the Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World. She was a member of the American Folklore Society, and a founding member of the Theosophical Society.  (Source: Who’s Who in America (1903-05)

I Shall Be Beautiful

I shall be beautiful some far-off day,

And eyes of love will look and find me fair;

For in my soul, flower-sweet and angel-pure,

Will blossom every secret, silent prayer

For beauty, which I may not yet attain,

But only love and seek with longing pain.

Love graciously will grant my heart’s desire,

Upon my brows will bind hope’s immortelles;

And I shall be as one with bud and bloom

That grace the sunny hills and dewy dells

On yon far shore where all the year is spring

And singing birds are ever on the wing.

O heart of mine!  Though storms beat fierce and wild,

Turn thee not back.  Thou shalt win safely through,

For love immortal leads thee by the hand.

Some sweet spring dawn thou shalt be all made new

And out of mists and clouds that gloom the night

Shalt pass to regions of undreamed delight.

-       Lillian Leveridge[1]

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[1] Lillian Leveridge was born in Hockering, Norfolk County, England in 1879. When she was four, her parents moved the family to Canada, settling in Hastings County, Ontario. In 1914, they relocated to Prince Edward Island. Lillian eventually moved to Toronto and became a schoolteacher. She also wrote poems; her most widely known piece was Over the Hills of Home, written as a tribute to her brother Frank, who died in the Great War in France. Lillian died in 1953. (Source: Canadian Poems of the Great War, 1918, by John W. Garvin)

Ways

“To some—unclouded skies and sunny days,

To some—grey weather and laborious ways,

To all—Thy grace;

To those who fall—Thy tenderness.”

John Oxenham

Eastern Wisdom

Since Faith at the Last Great Judgment can make my reckoning light,

Shall I fear if Faith requireth, to lose my life outright?

So the world is now my quarry and the hunter who hunts am I,

Though I was once the quarry, in the days that are long gone by.

Though others it hunt and capture, I stand from its dangers clear,

My soul is higher than fortune; then why should I Fortune fear?

-       Nasir-I-Khusraw[1]

O far-seeing falcon, whose seat is in the tree of Paradise—this corner of Labor-town is not thy rest.

-       Hafiz[2]

Through the lofty vault of Ether,

With wings of obedience I

One day shall soar to the heavens as

The sky-lark soars to the sky.

-       Nasir-I-Khusraw

The world is a book full of knowledge and justice, the binder of which book is Destiny, another binding the beginning and the end: The stitching of it is the law, and the leaves are the religious persuasions.

-       The Dabistan[3]

Let understanding marvel as it may, where men see clouds, on the ninth heaven I gaze, and see the throne of God.

-       Mahmoud

Life is a pledge of friendship from our Maker: Give me the pledge and take the pledge who will.

-       Akhlag-I-Jalali[4]

Increase in goodness as long as thou art here, that when thou departest, in that thou mayest still be joyful.

Firdawsi[5]

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[1] Abu Mo’in Hamid al-Din Nasir ibn Khusraw was born in 1004 in Qobadiyan in the district of Marv, in the eastern Persian province of Khurasan. He enjoyed high positions in the administrative ranks of the Saljuq court, including in the revenue department. Based on the quality of his writings, it is obvious he received an excellent education in the sciences, literatures and philosophies of his time, including the study of Greek and Neoplatonic philosophy. He examined the doctrines of the different Islamic schools and was not satisfied until he found and understood the Ismaili faith. From this event of conversion, he embarked on his journey, during which time he spent three years in the Ismaili court in Cairo of the Fatimid caliph, al-Mustansir (1029-1094). 

The Fatimid dynasty (909-1171) aimed at creating an Islamic state based on Ismaili tenets, and thus presented a direct theological and military challenge to the Sunni ‘Abbasid caliphate based in Baghdad. He left Cairo as the head of Ismaili missionary activities in his home province of Khurasan. When he died is uncertain. At some point, he was forced by the Sunni authorities to flee for his life; he lived the rest of his days in exile in the Pamir Mountains of Badakhshan, located in today’s Tajikistan and Afghanistan. (Source: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – iep.utm.edu)

[2] Hafiz is the pen name of Khajeh Shamseddin Mohammad Hafiz-s Shirazi. He was born in 1320 in Shiraz, Persia, son of Baha-ud-Din. As a young man, he memorized the Koran by hearing his father recite it; his pen-name reflects this accomplishment. Hafiz also memorized many of the works of his hero, Saadi (see footnote 181), the famous author and teacher from Shiraz, who had died thirty years before he was born. Hafiz’ father was a coal merchant; he sickened and died while the boy was in his late teens. This left Hafiz and his mother in serious debt. They went to live with his uncle Saadi, who had been named for the boy’s hero. Hafiz dropped out of school to work in a drapery shop, and later, in a bakery.

In his early thirties Hafiz became a poet of the court of Abu Ishak. He gained much fame and influence in Shiraz, and he became a teacher of Koranic studies at the college. But when he was 33, Mubariz Muzaffar captured Shiraz and ousted Hafiz from his position. Hafiz wrote protest poems. Five years later, the new tyrant was overthrown by his own son Shah Shuja. Hafiz regained his spot at the college. As the years went by, Hafiz began falling out of favor with Shah Shuja, and eventually fled Shiraz for his safety. He went into self-imposed exile in Isfahan, in central Persia. After a decade or so, Shah Shuja, invited him to return to Shiraz. He was re-instated to his post at the College. Hafiz composed over 5,000 poems in his lifetime, but few were written down. The Gift, which has been translated into English by Daniel Ladinsky, is one of his better-known works.

When he was 21, still working at the bakery, Hafiz delivered bread to a wealthy quarter of town and saw Shakh-e Nabat, a young woman of incredible beauty. Many of his poems are addressed to her. He longed to marry her, but it was not to be. Not only was he poor, physically unattractive and small, but she was promised to one of the city’s princes. In pursuit of reaching his beloved, Hafiz kept a forty day and night vigil at the tomb of Baba Kuhi. At the end of this vigil, he was visited by the Angel Gabriel, who told him that to achieve perfection, he should become a disciple of Attar of Shiraz, which he did. While still in his twenties, Hafiz married and became a father, though he continued to extol the virtues of Shakh-e Nabat.

At age 60, longing to be united with his Creator, Hafiz began a forty day and night vigil by sitting in a circle that he had drawn himself. He had a vision in which he finally achieved Cosmic Consciousness. He continued to write and teach, and died at the age of 69.  (Source: poetseers.org)

[3] This is a 17^th century Persian text surveying the many different kinds of religious experience in Asia, including Majism, Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism and many smaller sects. It is thought to have been written by Muhammad Muhsin, also known as Fani. It was first translated into English in 1843 as Religious Doctrines by Sir William Jones.

[4] The Akhlaq-e Jalali (Jalalian Ethics) is a 15^th century treatise by Jalal al-Din Muhammad ibn As’ad al-Dawani, first translated into English in 1839 by W. F. Thompson. Al-Dawani was born near Kazarun, southern Iran, in the village of Davan in 1426. He first studied there with his father before going to Shiraz to further and complete his education in philosophy, theology and law. As other leading religious scholars of his time and place, he was directly caught up in the turbulent politics of Iran in the second half of the fifteenth century. He was inducted into various religious offices, and many of his works were dedicated to Aq Qoyunlu and other Timurid rulers and princes. He also achieved fame as a teacher in the Begum madrasa (Dar al-Aytam) in Shiraz. The question of his religious allegiance, whether Sunni or Shi’i (he wrote theological works of both persuasions), has always been the subject of debate and of many fanciful stories, but it may be of comparatively slight significance given the situation in the Iran of his time, which was marked by a Sunnism with a strong Shi’i colouring. He died in 1502 near Kazarun, a year or so before the Safavid capture of Shiraz, and is buried in his home town.

[5] Firdawsi is the pen-name of Persian poet Abu Ol-Qasem Mansur (ca 935-1020), about whom little factual information is known. He is credited with writing Shah-nameh (Book of Kings), an epic of 60,000 couplets that tells the story of the kings of Persia until the seventh century.  (Source: hjconfer.home.att.net)