Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Shīrāzī (Persian: خواجه شمس‌‌الدین محمد حافظ شیرازی‎), known by his pen name Hāfez was a Persian poet who "laud the joys of love and wine [but] also targeted religious hypocrisy". His collected works are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature and are to be found in the homes of most people in Iran, who learn his poems by heart and use them as proverbs and sayings to this day. His life and poems have been the subject of much analysis, commentary and interpretation, influencing post-fourteenth century Persian writing more than any other author. Many semi-miraculous mythical tales were woven around Hāfez after his death. It is said that by listening to his father's recitations, Hāfez had accomplished the task of learning the Qur'an by heart at an early age (that is in fact the meaning of the word Hafez). According to one tradition, before meeting his patron Hajji Zayn al-Attar Hāfez had been working in a bakery, delivering bread to a wealthy quarter of the town. There, he first saw Shakh-e Nabat, a woman of great beauty, to whom some of his poems are addressed. Ravished by her beauty, but knowing that his love for her would not be requited, he allegedly held his first mystic vigil in his desire to realize this union. During this, he encountered a being of surpassing beauty who identified himself as an angel, and his further attempts at union became mystic; a pursuit of spiritual union with the divine. Twenty years after his death, a tomb, the Hafezieh, was erected to honor Hafez in the Musalla Gardens in Shiraz. The current mausoleum was designed by André Godard, a French archeologist and architect, in the late 1930s, and the tomb is raised up on a dais amidst rose gardens, water channels, and orange trees. Inside, Hafez's alabaster sarcophagus bears the inscription of two of his poems.[citation needed] His tomb is "crowded with devotees" who visit the site and the atmosphere is "festive", with visitors singing and reciting their favorite Hafez poems.

"The breeze of Nowruz is blowing from the land of sweetheart,
If you ask this breeze to help you, it would delight your heart.
The nightingale- nearly drunken of the fragrance of new spring bosoms-
whishes this celestial ode that
“Go to valleys to scatter the dust of your sorrows
And come to garden to learn from Nightingale how to live,
I say all this as secret that be a rose [grew] out of a [simple] bud
Because life is very short!”