S. R. Faruqi:

Here too [as in {1040,1}] is a paradox, but it's not one that stupefies the intellect. In the very ardor for union, the life was consumed/absorbed because: (1) the beloved is so delicate that union could not take place (as in {1039,5} and other verses with this theme). (2) in union, despite excess and intensity and every kind of difficulty, the beloved's freshness and charm is such that the speaker's ardor for union is not lessened. As in Shakespeare's play 'Antony and Cleopatra' (Act II, Scene 2):

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies...

[An Urdu translation of this passage, by Shan ul-Haq Haqqi, with some comments on it.]

But in Mir's verse there's a third interpretation as well: that the beloved is in fact far away (in a physical sense) but she is always in the lover's heart. In this way she isn't for a single moment separated from the lover, and through the ardor for union the lover's life keeps being consumed/absorbed.

Another interpretation is that between the beloved and the speaker there's some kind of veil/pardah, or in their relations there's some psychological curtain, such that after remaining together constantly there's still a kind of distance between them. Thus Bedil has a [Persian] verse:

'For our whole lifetime we drank flagons with you; and the pain of thirst did not go,
What a Doomsday, that from our side, you never arrived at our side!'

In Bedil's verse there's a mystery, but one solution to it can be that the beloved's nearness, and their drinking together, might be only in his imagination. The lover meditates on the beloved with a vision of such intensity and focus that the beloved has, so to speak, come before him in bodily form, but then it's clear that in reality the beloved is somewhere and the lover is somewhere else. In this regard it's almost the same theme that we've mentioned as the third interpretation of Mir's verse.

But despite this, the verse's mystery remains-- that despite their drinking together, the desire for drinking did not go; and the beloved is at his side, but doesn't come to his side. In one other verse, Bedil has expressed, in its place, passion and longing with absolute realism:

'We are absorbed in the beloved, and longing remains,
Our union is like waiting.'

Here, passion becomes its own goal. By contrast, in this verse by Khalil ul-Rahman Azmi there's a kind of bitterness and almost a sense of defeat:

aisii raate;N bhii ham pah gu;zrii hai;N
tere pahluu me;N terii yaad aa))ii

[even/also such nights have passed over us
while by your side, the memory of you came]

Unlike this one, Faiz Sahib's verse is entirely flat:

tum mire ho ke bhii mire nah hu))e
tum ko apnaa banaa ke dekh liyaa

[even/also having become mine, you didn't become mine
having made you my own, I saw]

Basing his verse on the daily affairs of passion, Mir Asar has very well expressed [in Persian] one aspect of the present theme:

'You came, and I went out from myself.
My wait still/now continues.'

In the fourth divan, Mir has presented this theme with an atmosphere of the whole bitterness and despair of passion:

{1526,4}.

This verse will be discussed in its place. In the present verse we should also note the verbal excellence that the homey expression jii khap gayaa in the first line has been enjoyably juxtaposed with the Persianized baa aa;N kih . See {1526,4}.

FWP:

SETS == GENERATORS; IZAFAT
MOTIFS == [DEAD LOVER SPEAKS]; UNION
NAMES
TERMS == THEME

Here's the beauty and utility of the izafat operating at full power: in the first line shauq-e vi.saal can mean either the ardor 'of' union (felt while having the experience) or the ardor 'for' union (felt while not having, but longing for, the experience). Or it could mean the ardor that 'is' union-- as when aa))iinah-e dil , 'the mirror of the heart', means 'the heart that is a mirror'. The first line also offers the complexities of khapnaa , which can mean both 'to be destroyed, wiped out' and 'to be absorbed in, lost in'.

Then the second line begins with the pseudo-helpfulness of the Persianized baa aa;N kih , literally 'even with that'-- for of course, the first line has given us many possible choices for the 'that'. That ardor? That union? That destruction? That absorption? And at the last possible moment the line also offers us the irresistibly ambiguous judaa (see the definition above). Is the speaker not 'separated, parted' from his beloved (so that they are together, in the same place), or is he not 'separate, distinct' from his beloved (so that they somehow mystically form one entity)?

In short, this verse too-- like the previous one, {1040,1}, though less flamboyantly-- ends up among the 'generators'. It's impossible to decide with any confidence whether the speaker has spent his life in union or in a separation full of longing and fantasy; whether he has been with the beloved in a normal human sense (if at all) or in some kind of mystical or transcendent oneness; or even whether he's currently alive or dead (though the latter seems very probable).