In his poetry he displayed a pleasing fertility of imagination, and he was an imitator of Āṣafī. In Āgra he placed the baggage for his journey to the next world on the back of Death's swift steed. I append some of his verses.

“He whose bosom is rent with grief in thine absence beat his
head with a stone so violently
That the stone became nought but a handful of dust in his
grasp.”

“In grief at thine absence I will smite my head, wretched
being that I am, with a stone.
Should my hand fail of its office I will strike my head upon
the stone.”
“I, thy candle, O my King, am a slave like Nuṣair,
Though decapitated a hundred times I yet live.”
“Those slain by thy cruelty lie scattered here and there like
drunken men,
It would seem that thy sword was tempered with wine in-
stead of water.”

“So much has my body melted away in grief at thine absence,
That if thou castest a chain on my neck it falls about my
fect.”

It is said that when he recited this last opening couplet before Maulānā Ṣādiq in Qandahār, and sought his approbation, the Manlānā said, “You have stolen this idea from Amīr Khusrav of Dihlī, who says—

‘So much has my mournful body melted in thine absence
That if thou placest a collar about my neck it falls to my
feet.’”

Another Couplet by Ashkī.

“If I would fall in following thee smitten with the stone
of calamity,
Stones rain upon me from every hair on my head prevent- ¹⁸⁷
ing me from falling.”

Ashkī seems to have used the metaphor of the stone so much as to leave nothing else for others to say upon the subject.

“See my feeble body among the dogs of thy street,
This one drags it one way, that one another.”

“My hair hangs dishevelled from my head down to my feet,
My body appears in the midst of it like a single white hair.”