Altaf Husain Hali

Hali is described in the book as a modern poet, a pupil of Ghalib, greatly admired, chiefly by Muslims, for poems calling for a Muslim and Indian renascence; the British Government gave him the title Shams-ul-ulema. The book, which was prepared in 1918, speaks of him as recently dead.

The one piece given here is drawn from Hindustani Lyrics (London: The Sufi Publishing Society, 1919), in the English verse of Inayat Khan and Jessie Duncan Westbrook. It is a free rendering, not a literal translation, and the original Urdu poem is untitled; it is named here by its first line.