without "rougissant" even by laymen in Persia--"Quant aux termes de
tendresse qui commencent ce quatrain, comme tant d'autres dans ce
recueil, nos lecteurs, habitues maintenant a 1'etrangete des
expressions si souvent employees par Kheyam pour rendre ses pensees
sur l'amour divin, et a la singularite des images trop orientales,
d'une sensualite quelquefois revoltante, n'auront pas de peine a se
persuader qu'il s'agit de la Divinite, bien que cette conviction
soit vivement discutee par les moullahs musulmans, et meme par
beaucoup de laiques, qui rougissent veritablement d'une pareille
licence de leur compatriote a 1'egard des choses spirituelles."

I must say that I, for one, never wholly believed in the Mysticism of
Hafiz. It does not appear there was any danger in holding and singing
Sufi Pantheism, so long as the Poet made his Salaam to Mohammed at the
beginning and end of his Song. Under such conditions Jelaluddin,
Jami, Attar, and others sang; using Wine and Beauty indeed as Images
to illustrate, not as a Mask to hide, the Divinity they were
celebrating. Perhaps some Allegory less liable to mistake or abuse
had been better among so inflammable a People: much more so when, as
some think with Hafiz and Omar, the abstract is not only likened to,
but identified with, the sensual Image; hazardous, if not to the
Devotee himself, yet to his weaker Brethren; and worse for the Profane
in proportion as the Devotion of the Initiated grew warmer. And all
for what? To be tantalized with Images of sensual enjoyment which
must be renounced if one would approximate a God, who according to the
Doctrine, is Sensual Matter as well as Spirit, and into whose Universe
one expects unconsciously to merge after Death, without hope of any
posthumous Beatitude in another world to compensate for all one's self-
denial in this. Lucretius' blind Divinity certainly merited, and
probably got, as much self-sacrifice as this of the Sufi; and the