325 He was Qāsim Khān of Badakhshān, one of the well-known Amīrs of the emperor Humāyūn. He was well acquainted with the art of poetry and wrote poetry well. He wrote a manavī of six thousand couplets in imitation of the Yūsuf-u-Zulaikhā (of Jāmī)* from which the following few couplets descriptive of the beloved are extracted:—

“The priceless jewelled band which bound her hair
Has fallen on her neck, feeling its own worthlessness beside
her hair,
She has not hung earrings of bright rubies in her ears
For there are hung distracted hearts.
Fortune, of its great favour, has not adorned
The neck of her dress with pearls like her teeth;
For as an ornament of the bosom of her goodly dress
Drops of blood fall from her face.*

When gold saw itself spurned by her feet
It fell in showers round her feet like fine muslin.
The whiteness of her neck, like a camphor candle,
Rises from the bosom of her dress like a cord of light.
The whiteness of her arm exceeds that of silver,*
Her fore-arm is as a chaplet of roses hung on jasmine
From those two sweet chaplets of hers
Her sleeves are filled with jasmine.
Her palm is as though she had taken a rose-petal in her hand.
Each finger is like the bud of a lily set upon it.
Her breast and shoulders, which deprive the mind of sense,
Seem to have taken a harvest of roses into their embrace.
As I am making entries in the register of her beauty (I
may say)
That the pure whiteness of her bosom exceeds that of milk;
Her two nipples of incomparable beauty,
Are as bubbles on the surface of milk.
Her waist transcends the bounds of description
For here the utmost delicacy is to be seen.”

He has also written a poem Lail-u-Majnūn of which this couplet of his is quoted:—

“An old man of an honourable tribe
Whose beard is like a white rose a yard in length.”

The following quatrain, he used to say, occurred to his mind in a dream:—

“O breeze, bring me some news from the street of my beloved!
Bring to my dying body good news of my life.
It is hard for me to arrive there.
Do me this favour and betake thyself thither swiftly.” ³²⁶

“The cup-sickness of the wine of grief has made me heavy-
headed;
Come, cup-bearer, and free me from the griefs of the world.”

“Cup-bearer, how long shall we dilate on
What we have suffered from fate?
Fill the cup, that we may for an hour free our hearts of
grief.”

Towards the end of his life he gave up the profession of arms, resigned his appointment, and retired into the corner of seclusion. How well would it have been with him had he also given up the writing of poetry!* His death occurred in Āgra, in A.H. 979 (A.D. 1571-72).