LXXXI. ĀLI‘Ī OF YAZD.*

He is a penman who writes the nasta‘līq hand well and is of moderately studious habits. His business was that of a book­seller * in Agra.

The following couplets are by him:—

“Cupbearer,* how long can the grief of this world be borne?
Bring wine, that I may banish grief from my heart.”

“Every moment she afflicts my heart, that she may make it
weary of her.
When will my heart weary of her, however much she
afflicts it?”

“I wish for no companion but thee, my darling,
I desire thee, and there is none in the world that I desire
beside thee.”

“If, when I have suffered a thousand griefs, she listens to a
word from me,
She hears but the speech of a self-seeker, and straightway
forgets it.”
“She is enraged if I speak to her but a word of my sad state;
How strange is this, that I cannot speak of my sad state to
her!”

A quatrain. 267

“The devotee boasts of his virtue and piety,
The lover expends the cash of his life for his love;
Each lives in hope of a glance from the eye of his Friend,
Each wonders towards whom the Friend will cast that
glance.”

Another quatrain.

“Summon contentment, if thou art wise,
Thou mayst thus, perchance, slay the dog of base desire.
See that neither water nor broth be too plentiful. Drain
not the cup,
For it will rebuke thee in a hundred draughts of iced water
and acid.”