Analysis of Lady That Hast my Heart

Shams al-Din Hafiz 1315 (Shiraz) – 1390 (Shiraz)



LADY that hast my heart within thy hand,
Thou heed'st me not; and if thou turn thine ear
Unto the wise, thou shalt not understand--
Behold the fault is thine, our words were clear.
For all the tumult in my drunken brain
Praise God! who trieth not His slave in vain;
Nor this world nor the next shall make me fear!

My weary heart eternal silence keeps--
I know not who has slipped into my heart;
Though I am silent, one within me weeps.
My soul shall rend the painted veil apart.
Where art thou, Minstrel! touch thy saddest strings
Till clothed in music such as sorrow sings,
My mournful story from thy zither sweeps.

Lo, not at any time I lent mine ear
To hearken to the glories of the earth;
Only thy beauty to mine eyes was dear.
Sleep has forsaken me, and from the birth
Of night till day I weave bright dreams of thee;
Drunk with a hundred nights of revelry,
Where is the tavern that sets forth such cheer!

My heart, sad hermit, stains the cloister floor
With drops of blood, the sweat of anguish dire;
Ah, wash me clean, and o'er my body pour
Love's generous wine! the worshippers of fire
Have bowed them down and magnified my name,
For in my heart there burns a living flame,
Transpiercing Death's impenetrable door.

What instrument through last night's silence rang?
My life into his lay the minstrel wove,
And filled my brain with the sweet song he sang.
It was the proclamation of thy love
That shook the strings of Life's most secret lyre,
And still my breast heaves with last night's desire,
For countless echoes from that music sprang.

And ever, since the time that Hafiz heard
His Lady's voice, as from a rocky hill
Reverberates the softly spoken word,
So echoes of desire his bosom fill.


Scheme ABACDDC EFEFGGE BHCHIIC JKJLMMJ NXNXKLN OPOP
Poetic Form
Metre 1011110111 11111011111 100111101 01011110101 1101001101 111111101 1111011111 1101010101 1111110111 1111010111 1111010101 1111011101 1101011101 1101011101 1111011111 111010101 1011011111 1101010101 1111111111 1101011100 1101011111 1111010101 1111011101 11110101101 110010100110 111101011 1011110101 11010001 1100111101 1101110101 0111101111 110010111 1101111101 01111111010 1101011101 010101111 1101110101 010010101 11010101101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,671
Words 315
Sentences 16
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 4
Lines Amount 39
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 222
Words per stanza (avg) 52
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 12, 2023

1:36 min read
92

Shams al-Din Hafiz

Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī (Persian: خواجه شمس‌‌الدین محمد حافظ شیرازی‎), known by his pen name Hafez (حافظ, Ḥāfeẓ, 'the memorizer; the (safe) keeper' and as "Hafiz", was a Persian poet who "lauded the joys of love and wine but also targeted religious hypocrisy". more…

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