Zauq

Zauq is called in the book a celebrated poet at the court of Bahadur Shah (r. 1837–57) and his teacher in the arts of verse, compiler of an anthology of poems, said to have written one hundred thousand verses and still highly popular and much quoted.

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.