exotic works of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel popular in Europe during this time. The Op. 24 cycle sums up his previous works as a composer in the early Romantic style and prepares for the next phase of his compositions, many of which were inspired by oriental and exotic colors, which established his reputation outside of Young Poland. Poetry Although the texts are in German, this is a paraphrased version of Hafiz's Persian poems by Hans Bethge. Hafiz of Shiraz, the original poet, was a supreme master of Persian ghazel poem in the 14th century. The ghazel is a typical form of Persian lyrical poem in early middle-ages which have themes of love, wine, physical beauty, and intoxication. The most notable collection of the ghazels is called Divan-i Hafiz. This poetry is hugely influenced later poets not only in Persia but in other countries as well, and was later translated into many Western languages. Hafiz, who, unlike other Persian poets, embraced the humanist and tactile qualities of ecstasy on earth in relation to the ultimate pleasure when the earthly proved inadequate: death. Death as ecstasy is a vital theme throughout the texts, paraphrased by Hans Bethge, who also provided the translation for Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. Hans Bethge, a German poet, scholar, and translator, was most famous for his translations of Oriental works rather than his poems. His unique but extraordinary musical versification inspired many composers such as Eisler, Krenek, Mahler, Strauss, Schoenberg, Ullmann, Webern, and Szymanowski. For Hafiz poems, Bethge did not miss the Persian impressionism in his translation. Hafiz's poetic sensibility of “Pure lyric gift, refined, sensuous, and aromatic” is regarded very alike to Szymanoski's musical sensibility. Songs Wünsche, (‘Wishes’) begins the cycle. The text is an epitomic example of Hafiz's sensibility. The illustrations of nature in a series of four couplets represent the narrator's longings for his lover. The piano accompaniment is chromatic, with perpetual motion meandering around the key of F# Major and a brief minor-third tonicization on Eb-Major at the climax of the piece, on the repetition of the words ‘Und du’ (And you). This repetition also occurs on the highest vocal pitch of the piece, and disrupts the flow of each textual line of eleven syllables by expanding it to thirteen, further marking it as the climax of the song. Szymanowski uses text painting, a common trait of the German Lied,