Muntakhab al-tawarikh 91.3

91.3

In spite of this my reliance on the noble beneficence of God is firm, and my hope in His gracious and boundless favours is sincere, (my hope being) that my eye may be suffused with light by the sight of your beauty, even as my heart is filled with the contemplation of the idea of you. Verily, God answereth our prayers and doth not disappoint us. Verse. I place my hope in God for the attainment of gifts, And my Lord is the giver of what his slave desires. And it is not far from your wonderful beneficence that you should give me to read an odour-diffusing epistle and send for me with a kind invitation. It is not fitting that the footsteps of my pen should wander more than this over the carpet of familiarity, and that the dove of composition should (any longer) sing on the branch of the tree of glee, and it is best to stop short at this period, and most meet and fitting to curtail (my letter) at the point of prayer (for you). May your exalted nature not cease to be protected from the casualties of ill-hap, and secured from the lightning-like mishaps of night and day. Verse. May you last as long as time, O refuge of the people of the time! This is the prayer of all creatures: May God answer the prayer of his servant, by the right of him after whom there comes no one.”