Muntakhab al-tawarikh 369: CLX. Vidā‘ī of Hirāt.

369

He was possessed of some attainments. He came to Hindustan and died here. The following verses are his: —
“The land of Ind is full of darkness, like the night of separation. Whoever has come hither regrets and repents it. Vidai, seek no gain from the land of India, but leave it. It is gain enough if thou carry thy life in safety from India.”
In imitation of the couplet which runs: —
“Happy is that time when, gazing on thy face, I am beside myself. From time to time I come to myself, and again and again I am beside myself.”
“It is not from wine at thy feast that I am beside myself The cup kisses thy lip, and it is from jealousy that I am beside myself.”
As one sees the flame of a candle in a lamp covered with a shirt I fell as one dead when I bade thee farewell, That thou mightest know that in thy absence I have no desire to live."
The following few couplets are from a qasidah which he wrote in praise of the Imam Husain (on him be peace):—
“Whenever, from the fierceness of love’s fire, I burst into flame like a candle, The flame ever and anon beats against me like a moth. Since my love has assured himself of my fidelity and love he employs himself in cruelty: Would that I had never submitted myself to the violence of a test! If I should become a partaker of the bounty of thy heart It will be possible for me to convey a hundred tales in one word. So common has the content of opulence become in the age of thy magnanimity That the soulless body turns with loathing from the prospect of life eternal. When the weight of thy commands afflicts the nature of the wind Even the light breeze oppresses the earth with the weight of a mountain. There is no king like me to-day in the kingdom of eloquence, Whoever doubts this let him test the truth of what I say by this Bismillah which I utter. O ye, beloved of the virgin of reality, when my thoughts soar They display their beauty through the windows of heaven.”
From another qasidah,
“If cruelty is done by thee my heart cheerfully submits to it “In my unrest I am ever seized by the desire of visiting the street of that moonlike beauty. But the thought of her infidelities arrests me by the way.”
“Her ringlet trembles on her cheek with the zephyr of my sigh As the smoke of the candle trembles in the passing breeze.”