Songs of Hafiz by active 14th century Ḥāfiẓ
Encovragements, for such as shall have intention to bee vnder-takers in the new… is a colonial promotional pamphlet written in the early 17th century. It is a policy tract that likely outlines inducements, obligations, and assurances for prospective “undertakers” in a state-sponsored plantation, encouraging settlement, investment, and orderly governance in the new enterprise. The book you provided is a three-part collection of Persian-inspired lyric poems that praise wine, music, love, and mystical
insight while reflecting on fate and the brevity of life. In the “Book of the Tavern Keeper,” the speaker invokes the Saki to pour the life-giving cup, treating intoxication as a symbol of divine illumination and setting carpe diem joy against the vanity of kings and the onrush of time, with mythic figures (Jamshid, Rustem, Darius) and paradise images (Selsebil, Houris, the Magic Cup) illuminating these themes. The “Book of the Singer” calls for lute and drum to scatter grief, celebrates comradeship, and measures human fragility against the fall of proud princes. The expansive “Book of Lyrics” turns intimate: addresses to a beloved, laments of absence and exile, homesick praise of Shiraz, playful market scenes, and sharp rebukes of hypocritical zeal, all threaded with aphoristic counsel to seize the rose-bright moment. Brief closing pieces include a moving lament at a child’s grave and terse quatrains that crystallize the whole: fate is fixed, power fades, and only love, song, and the red cup kindle a radiant, momentary peace. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77453.html.images | 138 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77453.epub3.images | 385 kB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77453.epub.images | 385 kB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77453.epub.noimages | 159 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77453.kf8.images | 446 kB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77453.kindle.images | 422 kB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77453.txt.utf-8 | 76 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/77453/pg77453-h.zip | 380 kB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
Similar Books
About this eBook
| Author | Ḥāfiẓ, active 14th century |
|---|---|
| Translator | Underwood, Edna Worthley, 1873-1961 |
| LoC No. | 18006328 |
| Title | Songs of Hafiz |
| Original Publication | Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1917. |
| Credits | Carol Brown and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PK: Language and Literatures: Indo-Iranian literatures |
| Subject | Persian poetry -- Translations into English |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77453 |
| Release Date | Dec 13, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 385 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |