He sometimes exercises his mind with poetry, and as a poet stands in the same class as Mīr Maḥmūd the Munshī, but is rather superior to him.* The following verses are by Muḥsin:— ³²⁴

“I do not desire her to be kind to me before strangers,
For I fear lest a stranger should see her and be captivated
by her.”

“One of stature like the cypress and with a mouth like a
rose-bud has stolen my heart,
In the flower of my youth she has disgraced me before the
world.”

“O thou, the plant of whose graceful form is fresh with
the water of life,
The cypress is overcome with shame before thy stature.”

I prefer the word shādāb (‘well-watered’) to Khurram, (‘fresh’) in the first hemistich.

The following is an enigma by him on the word rūḥ (‘the soul’):—

“O thou whose wavy locks waylay souls whom thou chidest,
O thou, the painful longing for whom pours balm on broken
hearts,
Is it the reflection of thy lip that is seen in water,
Or is it a rose-petal fallen into a cup of wine?”

The following is another enigma, on the name of Ḥusain Shāh:—

“How pleasant to me is the habitation in my eyes of that
moonlike beauty!
How pleasant is the acceptable aspect of her moonlike face!
Muḥsin has placed his head on her feet,
For her face like the sun, and yet like the moon, is pleasant.”*