673 ghazals of lyric wisdom and beauty — translated line by line into English. The poet whose rose garden has perfumed Persian literature for eight centuries.
Saadi of Shiraz is one of the four great pillars of classical Persian literature — alongside Hafez, Rumi, and Ferdowsi. His name appears on the Iranian 100-toman banknote. His couplet about human brotherhood is inscribed at the entrance of the United Nations. And for eight centuries, his ghazals have been read alongside those of Hafez as the supreme expression of lyric wisdom in the Persian language.
While Hafez dazzles and Rumi ecstatises, Saadi teaches — gently, wittily, and with an eye that misses nothing. His ghazals carry the warmth of lived experience: he spent forty years travelling the Islamic world before returning to Shiraz to write. Every verse has the weight of a man who has seen the world and come home to make sense of it.
A taste of Saadi's lyric range — from mystical longing to gentle wisdom. Toggle between English and Farsi.
Sheikh Muslih ud-Din Saadi Shirazi was born in Shiraz around 1210 CE and died there around 1291 — making him a near-contemporary of Rumi (1207–1273) and a slightly older contemporary of Hafez (c. 1315–1390). He studied at the Nizamiyya in Baghdad, one of the great centres of Islamic learning, before embarking on forty years of travel across the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and India.
These travels — through Crusader-held Levant, Mongol-threatened Persia, and the courts of dozens of rulers — gave Saadi's poetry its distinctive character: the warmth, wit, and practical wisdom of a man who has seen everything and remained kind. He returned to Shiraz in old age to write the Gulistan (1258) and Bustan (1257) — the two prose-and-verse works that made him one of the most widely read Persian authors of the medieval world.
But alongside these famous works, Saadi composed hundreds of ghazals — lyric poems of beauty, longing, and wisdom that have been read in Shiraz and beyond for eight centuries. It is Hafez who is most associated with the ghazal in Iran, but scholars consistently point to Saadi as Hafez's primary model. Hafez learned to write ghazals by reading Saadi.
Three things that make Saadi unique among the great Persian poets.
Saadi's ghazals share the same strict formal structure as Hafez's — rhyming couplets with a refrain, closing with the poet's pen name. But the tone is different. Where Hafez is rapturous and ambiguous, Saadi is warmer, clearer, and more humane.
Saadi's ghazals often feel like the letter of a wise friend — someone who has suffered, learned, and wants to share what they found. His imagery is drawn from the natural world (the rose, the garden, spring, the nightingale) and from the social world (the beloved, the king, the dervish, the traveller). The two worlds — nature and society — illuminate each other in his verse.
Our line-by-line translation preserves this tone — faithful to Saadi's Farsi without sacrificing the readability that makes him so enduring.
All 673 ghazals of Saadi's Divan translated line by line — Farsi original alongside faithful English translation — published in 2 volumes. Each available in Kindle and Paperback on Amazon.
A selection of Saadi's most celebrated ghazal openings — our faithful English translation alongside the original Farsi matla.
| # | Opening Line — English | Theme | مطلعِ غزل |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "I have no patience to remain — nor strength enough to go; I am the candle, burning where I stand." | Love & longing | نه صبرم هست که بمانم نه تاب آنکه بروم |
| 2 | "The rose has blossomed — come, let us not be heedless of spring; a week at most, and the rose-season will be gone." | Carpe diem | گل بشکفت بیا، از بهار غافل مباش |
| 3 | "Every night I spread the prayer-mat of longing — and weep until the candle of my heart burns low." | Mystical devotion | هر شب سجادهٔ اشتیاق میگسترم |
| 4 | "Without you, the garden of the world holds no pleasure — the rose without your face is nothing but a thorn." | The Beloved | بی تو در باغِ جهان رنگِ طرب نیست مرا |
| 5 | "The nightingale sang — and I, who am a prisoner of the rose's scent, wept at the beauty of its song." | Nature & longing | بلبل آواز داد و من که اسیرِ بویِ گلم |
| 6 | "Saadi, the lovers' road is long — but those who do not take it have never truly lived." | Wisdom & courage | سعدیا، راهِ عاشقی دور است |
| 7 | "I asked the wise man: what is the cure for the wound of love? He said: patience — and there is no other medicine." | Wisdom | از دانا پرسیدم: دوایِ زخمِ عشق چیست؟ |
| 8 | "The fragrance of the rose reaches those who are far — but those who are near sometimes cannot smell it." | Paradox of nearness | بویِ گل به دوران میرسد نه به نزدیکان |
| 9 | "I have wandered the world — I have eaten the salt of many tables — and I have found no sweeter place than Shiraz." | Home & belonging | سفر کردم جهان را — نانِ بسیاری خوردم |
| 10 | "They said: give up love. I said: how can the fish give up water? The sea is its life and its destruction both." | Love's paradox | گفتند عشق را رها کن — گفتم ماهی آب را چگونه رها کند؟ |
| 11 | "Whoever has not suffered for another has not lived — the heart that has not broken is not yet a heart." | Compassion | هر که برای دیگری نسوخته نزیسته است |
| 12 | "Do not be proud of beauty — the rose lives three days and the thorn lives a hundred years." | Impermanence | به جمال مناز — گل سه روز و خار صد سال است |
| 13 | "Saadi, speak well of others — or say nothing. The tongue that wounds earns its own wound." | Ethics of speech | سعدیا، خیر بگو یا خاموش باش |
| 14 | "Love entered my heart like a flood — and swept away everything I had built with my own hands." | Love's power | عشق در دل آمد چون سیل — هرچه ساخته بودم برد |
| 15 | "I am old — but the memory of your face is the spring that keeps me young." | Memory & youth | پیرم — اما خاطرهٔ رویت بهاری است که جوانم میکند |