ṣubḥ chaman meñ us ko kahīñ
taklīf-e havā le āʾī thī
ruḳh se gul ko mol liyā qāmat se sarv ġhulām kiyā
1) in the morning, somehow the ceremony/trouble
of taking the air had brought her into the garden
2) with her cheek she bought the rose; with her stature she enslaved the
cypress
Notes:
taklīf : 'Ceremony; the imposition of
a burthen (upon); burden, difficulty, trouble, distress, inconvenience; molestation,
injury, annoyance, hardship, grievance; suffering, ailment, affliction'. (Platts
p.332)
Well, I don't blame SRF for omitting this one. I think
it's by quite a margin the least enjoyable verse in the ghazal. The only
point of any interest at all that I can find it is the emphasis in the first
line on how casually, carelessly, even perhaps grudgingly the beloved somehow ends
up taking the air in the garden. Nevertheless, the smallest glimpse of her cheek
suffices to 'buy', or win the heart of, the rose, since its own cheek is
so much less 'rosy' by comparison. Similarly, a look at her tall, slender
stature 'enslaves' the cypress, since her lofty, swaying gait is superior
to its own graceful form.
But all that is so conventional, so uncompelling! We know
the beloved is beautiful, the effects she has on the rose and the cypress
have been worn into mental grooves by many hundreds of verses. So what
else is going on here? Nothing that I can see. Verses like this must have
been easy to omit when SRF made his selection for SSA.
For SRF's discussion of the idiomatic flavor of taklīf , see {321,6}.