He is very human; but his humanity is deeply ethical in character.

Much more than Omar and Sa'di, Háfiz was a thorough Sufi. "In one and
the same song you write of wine, of Sufism, and of the object of your
affection," is what Sháh Shuja said to him once. In fact, we are often
at an entire loss to tell where reality ends and Sufic vacuity
commences. For this Mystic philosophy that we call Sufism patched up a
sort of peace between the old Persian and the conquering Mohammedan. By
using veiled language, by taking all the every-day things of life as
mere symbols of the highest transcendentalism, it was possible to be an
observing Mohammedan in the flesh, whilst the mind wandered in the
realms of pure fantasy and speculation. While enjoying Háfiz, then, and
bathing in his wealth of picture, one is at a loss to tell whether the
bodies he describes are of flesh and blood, or incorporeal ones with a
mystic background; whether the wine of which he sings really runs red,
and the love he describes is really centred upon a mortal being. Yet,
when he says of himself, "Open my grave when I am dead, and thou shalt
see a cloud of smoke rising out from it; then shalt thou know that the
fire still burns in my dead heart--yea, it has set my very winding-sheet
alight," there is a ring of reality in the substance which pierces
through the extravagant imagery. This the Persians themselves have
always felt; and they will not be far from the truth in regarding Háfiz
with a very peculiar affection as the writer who, better than anyone
else, is the poet of their gay moments and the boon companion of their
feasts.

Firdusi, Omar, Sa'di, Háfiz, are names of which any literature may be
proud. None like unto them rose again in Persia, if we except the great
Jami. At the courts of Sháh Abbas the Great (1588-1629) and of Akbar of
India (1556-1605), an attempt to revive Persian letters was indeed made.