See How the Roses Burn!

The English translation of “See How the Roses Burn!” is a quatrain, or four-line poem, that has a single rhyme. These features reflect its Persian poetical form, the rubāʿī. Hafez is known for writing poems that have many levels of meaning; any given work can be “at once carnal, sociopolitical, and mystical” (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Edited by Stephen Cushman, Clare Cavanagh, Jahan Ramazani, and Paul Rouzer. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2021, page 571). This rubāʿī explores love, death, and connection with God from a Sufi perspective.

Hafez begins with an exclamation. The grammatical structure of the sentence propels the implied “you” of the reader to act: Look at the burning roses. Roses and fire are deeply symbolic in Sufi writings. The image of flowers burning can represent both the all-consuming ardor of romantic love and the difficult (but ultimately, transformative) path to spiritual enlightenment.

The speaker’s next command urges the reader to fetch wine to put out the fire. The word “quench” (Line 2) can refer to a supportive, sustentive act (as in quenching thirst) and a destructive act (as in putting out a fire).