The tavern and the praise of wine are, of course, bound to be prominent features.  In the same credo where Mirza Schaffy proclaims Hafid as his teacher he also proclaims the tavern as his house of prayer (i. p. 96), and so he celebrates the day when he quit the mosque for the wine-house (i. p. 98; cf.  H. 213. 4).  The well known poem “Aus dem Feuerquell des Weines” (i. p. 106) is in sentiment exactly like a quatrain of ’Umar Xayyam (Bodl. ed.  Heron-Allen, Boston, 1898, No. 78; Whinfield, 195); the last verse is based on a couplet of Sa’di (Gul. i. 4, last qit’ah, Platts, p. 18) which is cited immediately after the poem itself (i. p. 107).

A collection of Hafizian songs would scarcely be complete without a song in praise of Shiraz.  This we get in vol. ii. p. 48, where Shiraz is compared to Tiflis; and just as the former was made famous through Hafid, so the latter will become famous through Mirza Schaffy.  Little did the worthy sage of Ganja dream that this would come literally true.  Yet it did.  The closing lines of the poem—­

    Beruehmt ist Tiflis durch dein Lied
    Vom Kyros bis zum Rhein geworden—­

are no empty boast; they simply express a fact.

None of Bodenstedt’s later poetic publications ever attained the success of the Mirza Schaffy songs, and, it may be added, none of them equalled those songs in merit.  In 1874 the author resolved once more to try the magic of that name and so he launched forth a collection called Aus dem Nachlasse Mirza Schaffy’s, and to emphasize the Persian character of these poems the Persian translation of the title, [Arabic], appeared on the title-page.  In spite of all this, however, the Orientalism in these poems is more artificial than natural; it is not felt as something essential without which the poems could not exist.  The praise of wine, which is the main theme of the second book,—­for the collection is divided into seven books,—­is certainly not characteristically Persian; European, and especially German poets have also been very liberal and very proficient in bibulous verse.  The maxims that make up the third and a portion of the fourth book are for the most part either plainly unoriental, or else so perfectly general, and, we may add, so hopelessly commonplace, as to fit in anywhere.  Some, however, are drawn from Persian sources.  Thus from the Gulistan we have in the third book, Nos. 8 (Gul. Pref. p. 7, last qit’ah), 9 (ibid. p. 6, first three couplets), 12 (ibid. iii. 27, math. p. 89) and 36 (saying of the king in Gul. i. 1, p. 13).  No. 31 is from the introduction to the Hitopadesa (third couplet).[210] “Die Cypresse,” p. 103, is suggested by Gul. viii. 111 (K.S. 81).