Zolf-'āšofte
The poem. In the transcription below, "x" = "kh" as in "Khayyam", ' is a glottal stop. Overlong syllables, which take up the time of a long plus a short syllable in the metre, are underlined. The metre. The metre is called "ramal-e maxbūn" ("hemmed "ramal" "), since in contrast to the usual "ramal" with its feet of – u – –, all the feet except the first are "hemmed", that is, shortened, to u u – –. It is a catalectic metre since the last foot "fa'ilātun" lacks the final syllable and becomes "fa'ilun". In the scheme below, x = "anceps" (i.e. long or  short syllable), u = a short syllable, and – = a long syllable: In Elwell-Sutton's system of Persian metres this metre is classified as 3.1.15. The final pair of short syllables is "biceps", that is, the two short syllables may be replaced by a single long syllable; this occurs in about 35% of lines. The first syllable in this metre is long in about 80% of lines. This metre is fairly common in classical Persian lyric poetry, and is used in 143 (27%) of the 530 poems of Hafez. Notes on individual verses. Verse 1. The gender of the  person described is not made clear in the Persian; it could be a man or a woman, and is possibly left deliberately ambiguous by Hafez. However, in view of the long tradition of homoerotic Persian love poetry in the centuries before Hafez, it is most likely that the person is male. "Many of the unusual attributes of the 'beloved' can be understood by recalling that in the classical lyric poetry the image of the poet's sweetheart refers more often than not to a male figure, normally a youth". Verses 1, 2 and 7 have echoes of the opening verses  of a well-known poem of the 13th-century mystic poet Iraqi which begins: The same Iraqi poem opening is imitated in Hafez's ghazal 27. As Edward Granville Browne translates it, Iraqi's poem contains Sufic imagery, but most commentators do not see this ghazal of Hafez as having a Sufic interpretation. Verse 2. is literally a narcissus-flower, but here refers to the eye. Verse 5. The phrase "the day of 'Am I not?' " refers to the occasion, early in the history of creation, when, according to Qur'ān 7.172, God removed Adam's as-yet-unborn descendants from  the loins of Adam's children and asked them "Am I not your Lord?" (), and they replied "Yes! We have born witness" (). It is also known as the day of the Primordial Covenant. See further: Covenant (religion)#Islam. Verse 7. The word means "vowing to sin no more; repenting; repentance, penitence; conversion; abjuring; renouncing; recantation". With this word Hafez indicates that he knew that what he did was a sin, but nonetheless he did it. Other Hafez poems. There are articles on the following poems by Hafez on Wikipedia. The number in the edition by Muhammad Qazvini and Qasem Ghani (1941 ) is given: