be-daad-e inti:zaar kii :taaqat nah laa sakii
ai jaan-e bar-lab-aamadah be-taab ho ga))ii
1) you could not summon the strength for the cruelty/'injustice' of waiting!
2) oh life that has come to the lip, you've become faint/agitated/impatient?!
jaan bah lab (of which jaan-e bar-lab is a variant): 'At the point of death, dying, expiring'. (Platts p.373)
be-taab : 'Faint, powerless; agitated, restless, uneasy, impatient ... ); devoid of splendour, lustreless'. (Platts p.204)
Oh life that has come to the lips, you were not able to summon the strength for the trouble of waiting-- and you so quickly became faint, and have come to the lips?
SETS == EXCLAMATION
LIFE/DEATH: {7,2}
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
The first line is intriguing, because it's addressed to (or possibly is about) an unidentified feminine entity. In the ghazal world, the lover, the beloved, and God are all masculine. Our first guess would probably be jaan , but under mushairah performance conditions we're obliged to wait a bit before our uncertainty can be resolved.
Once we hear the second line, it becomes clear that the tone of this verse is enjoyably reproachful. All the commentators insist that be-taab ho ga))ii must be read as a question; this is quite plausible (through the colloquial omission of the kyaa ), although formally of course it looks like a statement.
The culminating pleasure of the verse is that final, emphatic, closural be-taab (see the definition above). For it's remarkably flexible: it can mean 'faint' (the life is reproached for being half-dead); or 'agitated' (the life is reproached for being distressed, for lacking endurance); or 'impatient' (the life is reproached for being eager to escape into death). As so often, it's left to us to decide.
Asi:
It was not able to endure the cruelty of waiting. Bravo, oh life that has come to the lip, bravo! What have I seen?! -- you have become faint! In the final part is a question.
== Asi, p. 282