S. R. Faruqi:

The verse no doubt has 'mood', but its theme is apparently utterly shopworn and devoid of depth. The 'mood' too of the verse isn't very far from the 'romantic sorrow' of [Mirza Shauq's] masnavi zahr-e ʿishq :

le ke dil meñ tumhārī yād chale
bāġh-e ʿālam se nā-murād chale

[having taken your memory in our heart, we went on
from the garden of the world, unfulfilled, we went on]

Momin has said, in a much better style:

tum hamāre kisī t̤araḥ nah huʾe
varnah dunyā meñ kyā nahīñ hotā

[you did not, in any way, become ours
otherwise, in the world what does not exist/happen?!]

But Mir, by making a distinction between zamānah and ʿālam , has created an additional point in his verse. Here, by ʿālam is meant the physical world of dust and brick in which we live; and by zamānah , the principle of history and time that operates in the world. But here there may also be an allusion to the famous 'divine hadith' attributed to God, 'Do not abuse the age/world, for the age/world is from Me'. Thus the zamānah provides to the ʿālam the necessities and blessings of life. And the ʿālam delivers these goods and blessings to the people, or divides them among them. Thus the speaker has no complaint against the zamānah ; rather, everything was there in the world, but nothing of it reached us.

It should be understood that among hadith specialists, there's the suspicion that the above hadith is not 'divine' [that is, directly God-sent]. But here we're not considering that. Ordinary people in any case believe it to be a divine hadith. The basic point is that Mir probably had this divine hadith in mind and thus did not abuse the age. Rather, he has put the whole blame on the head of the world-- that the world did not convey to us the goods and property that had been collected by the age.

It's also clear that the 'deprivedness' that is mentioned in the verse can be a spiritual deprivation. It can also be the deprivation of the lover (for union the simile of 'wealth' is used; for wisdom and mystical knowledge too the simile of 'wealth' is common). And this 'deprivation' can also be of worldly wealth and property.

There's also the possibility that in the first line ʿālam might mean the world, and in the second line ʿālam might mean the people of the world. For example, we say falāñ kī shādī meñ sārā ʿālam ṭūṭ paṛā . Now the meaning becomes that we alone left the world disappointed; otherwise, the age gave a great deal to the rest of the people of the world.

Sauda and Mir both have composed ghazals of fourteen or so verses in this 'ground', but Sauda has omitted the rhyme-word of diyā , while in Mir's ghazal the verse with this rhyme turned out to be the masterpiece of the ghazal [ḥāṣil-e ġhazal]. Mus'hafi has composed fifteen verses, and the truth is that Mus'hafi's ghazal is much better than Sauda's. The rhyme-word of diyā , Mus'hafi has versified in a new aspect. The verse isn't very good, but it would be unfair not to do justice to its 'search':

ham ne hī qadr nah kī daulat-e dunyā kī dareġh
varnah ham ko bhī falak ne thā diyā kyā kyā kuchh

[only/emphatically we didn't value the wealth of the world, alas!
otherwise, to us too, what-all things the sky gave]

FWP:

SETS
MOTIFS == [DEAD LOVER SPEAKS]
NAMES
TERMS

If we look closely at ʿālam and zamānah , their range of meanings is so nearly identical that they differ mostly in emphasis (see the definitions above). Broadly speaking, ʿālam means 'world' first and 'age' second; zamānah means 'age' first and 'world' second. Apart from possible reference to that hadith, what does it mean to exclaim at how many things the 'age' has given to the 'world'? It would make just as much sense to exclaim at how many things the 'world' has given to the 'age', since neither of these abstractly vague exclamations is evocative of anything in particular.

Their chief aim, in my view, is to create just that air of universality, of generalization. Thus the contrast is maximized with the speaker, 'Mir', that one small hapless individual. For the main point, after all, is that in the midst of a vast network of abundance and gift-giving, the speaker is solitary and 'deprived'-- deprived even of his life, since in this state he has left the world.