He composed a dīvān, and also a tarjī‘-band* satirizing Kucik Beg, the accountant of Bairam Khān, the letters of which a hundred storms like that which occurred in the days of Noah would not wash from the pages of this age. The following few couplets are by him:—*

“O thou, in whose glorious days time glories,
Khān, son of a Khān, chief, and high officer of kings,
Bairām!

The steed of perception cannot traverse the valley of thy
understanding.
The noose of imagination cannot reach the battlements of
the palace of thy glory.
I have a word to say: I will expound it unto the Nawwāb.
I have a difficulty: I will represent it to his servants.
³⁴⁶ Thou hast given the high post of accountant
To Kucik Beg. Say for what reason, O boast of mankind.
Thou art perhaps ignorant of his reprehensible acts,
Although inquiry into the characters of servants is a duty
incumbent on governors.
He was an infamous boy, and conceited, a wine-bibbing
libertine.
A lad ever hankering after gold, soft, and self-willed.
His business was the service* of Khẉāja Amīr Beg the
Vazīr.
Factor to the family of His Highness Mīrzā Bahrām.*
Other things are known about him from a certain source.
But I feel ashamed to reveal them before his honour the
Khān.
To cut a long story short and|to make and end quickly I will
come to my tale.
And I will tell a tale regarding that mutilated* wretch.
Wherever he has been his conduct has been such
That he has brought upon himself the hatred of all, both
gentle and simple.

Oh on thy leprous body,’ thus pray to God,
Both morning and evening, all the inhabitants of the
heavens,
May there fall fever, colic, haemorrhoids, consumption, and
dropsy,
Measles, intestinal worms, epilepsy, and delirium.
Then when thou haltest weak and feeble, seeking a cure,
May all the physicians prescribe for thee the following diet,
Simiae vomitum, decem dierum catuli stercora, ³⁴⁷
Ursi penem, felis caudam, et stercora sicca quibus calefiunt
hypocausta.
Happy will that day be when thou art griped by colic, for
which
The great physicians will prescribe an enema,
And the forefoot of an ass, the foot of a camel, the horn of
a goat.
The scalp of a bear, the head of a mule, and the teeth of a
hog.’”

He could also be abusively satirical in prose as the following story will show. One day when weary* he was seated on an old felt cushion and said to me before the court, ‘Dog, dost thou eat filth before me?’ I said, ‘Surely it is lawful for any* dog to eat filth before you.’ However, as Nuvīdī had but one eye I have closed my eyes to his baseness,* and if I have recounted his faults it was only because the road was opened to me by the author of the original Taẕkirah,* Mīr ‘Alā'u-d-daulah; and although the recording of obscene language and the reckoning up of faults is not the custom of the author of this Selection, yet in this in­stance, with the object of indulging the love of a jest and keeping up the merriment of the entertainment, I have blindly and exactly copied the passage from the original; and I hope that the clear-sighted men of this time will regard what they have seen as unseen and what I have done as though it had never been done, and will wink at my fault and my shame, and pass by it and pardon me, for ‘Satire in speech is as salt in food’ is a proposition accepted by all learned and well-informed men, and although some people, falsifying the text, read, instead of ‘Satire,’ ‘Syntax* in speech,’ the Maqāmāt* of Ḥarīrī clearly show that the first, and not the second, is the correct reading.

The following few verses are from Nuvīdī's dīvān, but I am not certain whether they are by this Nuvīdī, or by another* poet with the same poetical name:—

“I still have thy arrow, which I have had in my heart for
an age,
I still have the plant of desire for thee which I received
from thee;
³⁴⁸ I still have the fetter which at the very first
I, poor and distraught,
Received from that Lail-like beauty with the musky
tresses.*
Though my eyes have become dim from weeping,
I retain the picture* of thee
In that same form which has ever been reflected in the
mirror of my heart.
Take my hand, love, for an age.
My foot has been held in the valley of love's madness in
the mire caused by my tears, as it was always held.
I, Nuvīdi, still have that heart like a bird struck by the
arrow of her glance

Which I had long ago, rolling in dust and blood like a bird
half slain.

Another ode.

“Longing for thy ringlet has made me restless,
I am at death's door. O come to my help!
I could endure thy cruelty all my life, but
Thy sitting with a stranger I cannot endure.
I restrain myself from weeping at the end of thy street
For I fear that the flood of my tears would sweep me away
from the end of thy street.
Not for the twinkling of an eye does the restless longing
for thy ringlet
Permit me to sleep during the night of absence from thee.
Nuvīdī, since my heart has become united* with grief for
thee,
The confusion of all material things has left my remem-
brance.”

Another ode.

“Though I die miserably from the ceaseless grief which is
mine
I will make to the stranger no complaint of my misery.
If in love's delirium I declared to thee
The grief of my heart, pardon me, in thy mercy.
Nuvīdī wished to declare the grief of his heart to thee, ³⁴⁹
But when he saw thy face he forgot his grief.”

Another ode.

“Before thy arrow is drawn from my wounded heart
My grief-worn life will leave me a hundred times.
Thy heart-piercing arrow has entered my wounded breast
With ease, but will with difficulty be drawn thence.
To the end of her street I, helpless in my weakness.
Go a hundred times, hoping to see her come out but once.
O Nuvīdī, from within thy patched woollen robe
If thou art a Musalmān why does the idolator's sacred
thread appear?”

A couplet.

“Thou hast no thought for the next world, nor for this,
Nuvīdī, I know not how thou art employed.”