y his didactic works, and for these we cherish him. The
"Bustan," or "Tree-Garden," is the more sober and theoretical, treating
of the various problems and questions of ethics, and filled with Mystic
and Sufic descriptions of love.

His other didactic work, the "Gulistan," is indeed a "Garden of Roses,"
as its name implies; a mirror for every one alike, no matter what his
station in life may be. In prose and in poetry, alternating; in the form
of rare adventures and quaint devices; in accounts of the lives of kings
who have passed away; in maxims and apothegms, Sa'di inculcates his
worldly wisdom--worldly in the better sense of the word. Like Goethe in
our own day, he stood above the world and yet in it; so that while we
feel bound to him by the bonds of a common human frailty, he reaches out
with us to a higher and purer atmosphere. Though his style is often
wonderfully ornate, it is still more sober than that of Hafiz. Sa'di is
known to all readers of Persian in the East; his "Gulistan" is often a
favorite reading-book.

The heroic and the didactic are, however, not the only forms in which
the genius of Persian poetry loved to clothe itself. From the earliest
times there were poets who sung of love and of wine, of youth and of
nature, with no thought of drawing a moral, or illustrating a tale. From
the times of Rudagi and the Samanide princes (tenth century), these
poets of sentiment sang their songs and charmed the ears of their
hearers. Even Firdusi showed, in some of his minor poems, that joyous
look into and upon the world which is the soul of all lyric poetry. But
of all the Persian lyric poets, Shams al-Din Mohammed Hafiz has been
declared by all to be the greatest. Though the storms of war and the
noise of strife beat all about his country and even disturbed the peace
of his native place--no trace of all this can be found in the poems of
Hafiz--as though he were entirely removed from all that went on about
him, though seeing just the actual things of life. He was, to all
appearance, unconcerned: glad only to live and to sing. At Shiraz he was
born; at Shiraz he died. Only once, it is recorded, did he leave his
native place, to visit the brother of his patron in Yezd. He was soon
back again: travel had no inducement for him. The great world outside
could offer him nothing more than his wonted haunts in Shiraz. It is
further said that he put on the garb of a Dervish; but he was altogether
free of the Dervish's c