18 
Bilgrami —Quatrains of Baba Tahir . 
53. 
[No. 1, 
1. Without thee tears come from my wet eyelashes, 
2. Without thee the tree of my hope becomes barren, 
3. Without thee night and day in a solitary corner, 
4. I sit till my life comes to an end. 
I have made this emendation in the 4th line, i.e., substituted 
o* as it is not idiomatic to say^jf but 
jj'f j*t or yf j*** . 
54. 
1. 0 heart, I wear blue clothes in thy absence, 
2. I bear the burden of thy grief like the tent-carrying elephant ; 
3. I boast of thy love like the dawn, 
4. From this moment till the time of Israfil’s trumpet. 
In Persia indigo-blue, black or antimony (surma) coloured clothes 
are worn in mourning; nil is indigo, and not purple. 
In the 2nd line the last word is an elephant, and not <Jj<S zil ; 
hence cbi zail cannot rhyme with nil and sarafil. A/cta. jama means 
clothes, as well as carpets and other articles used for spreading, which 
I have translated as “ tent ” here. Note the colour of the elephant 
which has a dark bluish tint. Other poets have used the words 
and Jaj together, keeping the colour of the latter in view. Cf. 
Firdausi: 
tj * <-kr! LS'^ ft"* \j* 
“ You threatened me that under the feet of elephants 
“ You will make my body like the river Nile. ” 
The colour of the Nile, from the meaning of the word, is supposed 
to be blue. 
The translator considers this Quatrain to be free from dialectical 
forms. This is true in one sense, that is, as far as writing is concerned. 
But in pronunciation it differs in so far, that the words 
are pronounced in Raji as pushum , kashum , zanum , and not as in 
modern Persian, pusham , kasham , and zanam. 
In the 4th line, note the play upon the second word fi dam; dam 
means the “moment ” also “blowing,” where it stands for the verb 
so that the line means “ from this moment till the moment or time of 
Israfil’s trumpet ” or “ from this moment till the blowing of Israfil’s 
trumpet.” 
55. 
1. The vessel of my happiness is full of grief (liver's or heart’s 
blood), 
2. My heart is ever full of fire and my eyes ever wet j. 
