Spring and all its flowers
by Hafiz
(1320 - 1389) Timeline

English version by
Homayun Taba & Marguerite Theophil


Spring and all its flowers
now joyously break their vow of silence.
It is time for celebration, not for lying low;
You too - weed out those roots of sadness from your heart.

The Sabaa wind arrives;
and in deep resonance, the flower
passionately rips open its garments,
thrusting itself from itself.

The Way of Truth, learn from the clarity of water,
Learn freedom from the spreading grass.

Pay close attention to the artistry of the Sabaa wind,
that wafts in pollen from afar,
And ripples the beautiful tresses
of the fields of hyacinth flowers.

From the privacy of the harem, the virgin bud slips out,
revealing herself under the morning star,
branding your heart and your faith
with beauty.

And frenzied bulbul flies madly out of the House of Sadness
to unite with the flowers;
its love-crazed cry like a thousand-trumpet blast.

Hafez says, and the experienced old ones concur:

All you really need
is to tell those Stories
of the Fair Ones and the Goblet of Wine.

All things shall melt and turn into songs when Spring comes. Even the stars, the vast snowflakes that fall slowly upon the larger fields, shall melt into singing streams. When the sun of His face shall arise above the wider horizon, then what frozen symmetry would not turn into liquid melody?

Kahlil Gibran

Half an hour in a spring evening is worth a thousand gold pieces.

Japanese Proverb

A Prayer in Spring


Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

Robert Frost (1915)

It seems as if
This must be the end of it-
So much spring snow

Issa (1762-1826

“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.”
― Bashō

"April's air stirs in
Willow-leaves...a butterfly
Floats and balances”
― Bashō,

The two plum trees --
I love their blooming!
One early, one later.

Buson

In the spring sea
Waves undulating and undulating
All day long.

Buson

Coming back --
So many pathways
Through the spring grass.

Buson