Give a thousand times more than all that reason can comprehend.
On the feast day of thy birth it would be proper
To sacrifice celestial dromedaries
Thou hast no option as regards kindness and grace
What can come from the sun but sunshine?
Repentance brings back with the acme of entreaty
Him who on leaving your door's safety binds on the load of
the litter
Let it not displease if for the glorious hearing
I tell a new tale with confirmatory oaths.
By that God who hath implanted in the Shāh's nature
Princely graces and perfect humanity
By the heavens by observing whose motions
The acute philosopher governs nature
By the division of the stars into Fixed and Planetary
All which are drops of existence in heaven's ocean
By the order of the elements which on Being's page
All form feet*
(metrical) in the poem of Existence
By the conjunction of organisms whose dissolution
Works the overthrow of progeny
By the talisman of man's body which is a microcosm
Before which the senses and the intellect are confounded*
By the zeal of the pure souls who have never made
An untrue oath for the sake of eternity (?).
By the forehead-adorning dust of the performers of sijda
Who excel the devotion of the saints of Lebanon*
By the road-dust of the travellers to the holy station
By the guides of the path of certitude
By the acute unitarianism of the son of Arabī*
By the austere cloak of the Pir of Kharqān*
I became not (I swear) from pelf a believer in
Thy Majesty glorious in fortune and throne
Whom the glorious Deity has placed in splendour.
That thou mightest henceforth be the qibla of me the beggar
'Tis worship to prostrate oneself before thy face
For as regards worship thou art the world's altar.
Enough! The God-knower knows thy perfections
Thou art the altar of the hopes of the pious
The prostration of service toward thee is right for men
In this matter there is no conflict of faiths
Why should thy shrine not be my fortune's attār
When judge and sage turn their heart-faces to thee
Every hair of me speaks in praise of thy favours
To me the charge of impiety is preferable to that of ingratitude
Who can describe the niceties of thy favours
The things of ecstacy come not within the bounds of words
To put the woof of words and thoughts o'er the full moons*
of thy justice
Were to place cotton raiment on the moon's shoulder
When I put*
on the pilgrim's robe to visit thy throne's shrine
The rose of paradise became a thorn in comparison therewith
From eve till morn my bosom is pricked
By the budding-breasted bride of my heart;
My pen-bow has pointed word-arrows
For piercing the hearts of the envious
A holy strain is poured forth by the birds of my fancy
When my pen's palm-tree swells with sap
All their pens do not equal the movement of mine
There is a difference between the Shāh's ensign and the shepherd's
staff
From the Attic salt which I sprinkle from my pen
My inkstand can claim to be a salt-cellar
From the glorious morsels at the Shāh's banquet
What comes to my soul is like balmy wine
If grace and favour assist me
I'll ascend hundreds of steps above Hope's summit
My tongue's wish does not exceed the bounds of respect
Grant my desire such as Thou knowest it!
This is the end of my request.
On Thee is my trust!
Where was I? Whither has the plenteous flood of words carried me? In fine, as the design of the lord of the world in undertaking this expedition was based upon benevolence to all, the great officers, who regarded service as the substance of their religion, gathered together for their duties without any arrangements having been made for the forming of camps. The great encampment assumed another appearance from the assemblage of a victorious soldiery. H.M.'s innate dignity demanded that he should proceed in person to chastise the Rānā, while a number of officers should be dispatched to Malwa in order to cleanse that province from the dust of the rebellion of the sons of Muḥammad Sulan Mīrzā. The lot of this service fell upon Shihābu-d-dīn Aḥmad Khān; Shāh Budāgh Khān, Murād Khān, Hājī Muḥammad Khān Sīstānī and others who had received fiefs in Malwa, undertook the preparations. They set out from the fort of Gāgrūn and did not draw rein till they reached Ujjain. The Mīrzās fled to Gujrat. The details of this are that when they heard that the grand army had left the capital and was advancing stage by stage, Ulugh M., who was the eldest brother, and whose head itched with contumacy, departed and went to Ibrāhīm Ḥusain M. and Muḥammed Ḥusain M., who were in Ujjain, in order to join them and plot his own destruction. When those wretches got the news of the arrival of the imperial forces at Gāgrūn, they were amazed and went off to Māndū. There Ulugh M. quitted his body (i.e., died) on the uplifting of the noise of the drums of fortune. The other brothers perceived that to resist the royal army was beyond their power and fled towards Gujrāt. There they joined Cingīz Khān, who had been a slave of Sulān Maḥmūd of Gujrāt, and who, after his death, had seized several of the forts of Gujrāt, such as Cāmpānīr, Broach and Surāt. There, too, they misconducted themselves and spread dissension until they threw the dust of destruction on their own heads after the conquest of Gujrāt. An account of that masterpiece of good fortune will be given in its proper place. In short, the victorious troops cleansed Malwa from the dust of those ill-fated ones, and then went to repose in their fiefs. They sent to Court reports of their success and of the abandonment by the rebels of the imperial territories.