He is Sayyid Muḥammad, the cloth weaver, well known as Mīr Rubā‘ī. In this description of poetry he is the ‘Umar Khayyām of the age. He left this world in the course of the journey to Jaunpūr,* in the year H. 973 (A.D. 1565-66), and the words ‘Mīr Rubā‘ī made a journey,* were found to give the date of his death.

A quatrain.

“Fikrī has a head which is unfurnished with contents,
He has at his heart a secret pain for which there is no
remedy.
For an age he has made his head his feet on the road of
love,
He has set out on a road which has no ending.”

As his verses are very well known I shall conclude by quoting the following few quatrains and a couplet which are attributed to him:—

“O heart, though thy love be a warrior, fear not,
Though her business be oppression and mortal enmity, fear
not,

In the army of her beauty her two eyes are warriors,
For the rest, the down on her cheek and her mole are the
dark colour of the host.

“If one will not, like the sun, suffer the sword to be raised
above his head
The sky shall not be clad from head to foot in gold for him:
If the gardener will not endure the hardships of the thorn,
He shall receive into his bosom no loved one in rosy gar-
ments like a bud.”

“On the morrow, when nothing shall remain of this world ²⁹⁶
but a tale,
When signs shall appear of the Resurrection's spring,
The beloved ones shall raise their heads from the dust-like
verdure,
And we too shall raise our heads in courtship.”

“Thou goest with thy locks dark as night, and like dew on
every side
Salt (wit) rains from thee, alas for wounded hearts!”