Hafiz was one of those blessed and harassed souls who, through art, poetry, imitation, and half-unconscious desire, have become so sensitive to beauty that they wish to worship—with eyes and speech and fingertips—every fair form in stone or paint or flesh or flower, and suffer in stifled silence as beauty passes by; but who find, in each day’s fresh revelation of loveliness or grace, some forgiveness for the brevity of beauty and the sovereignty of death.
