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The finest Urdu and English poetry from legendary and contemporary poets
31 poems available
Mirza Ghalib
Hazaar khwahishein aisi ke har khwahish pe dam nikle
Bahut nikle mere armaan lekin phir bhi kam nikle
Na main jaanaa jun-ko na woh jaane mast-e-daraa
Ke kis ka kaun hai tu tera kaun hai tera
Mohsin se dil ne waista kiya hai jo har roz
Bakhshish ke badle dard-e-dil ka sauda karte hain
Meaning
A thousand desires each worth dying for. Many wishes were fulfilled yet still too few.
12.4K likes
Mirza Ghalib
Dil-e-nadan tujhe hua kya hai
Aakhir is dard ki dawa kya hai
Aah ko chahiye ek umr asar hone tak
Kaun jeeta hai teri zulf ke sar hone tak
Meaning
O innocent heart what has happened? A sigh needs a lifetime to take effect.
9.8K likes
Mirza Ghalib
Ishq mujhko nahin sahi woh jahaan sahi
Jung-e-ishq sahi jang-e-jaan sahi
Woh jo shak ho to khud ko jala de sahi
Ishq pe koi zarf ka imtihaan sahi
Meaning
If love is not for me then the world is. If it means war of love so be it.
6.3K likes
Mirza Ghalib
Ye na thi hamari qismat ke wisaal-e-yaar hota
Agar aur jeete rehte yahi intezaar hota
Teri naazuki se jaana ke bande bayabaan hain
Teri galiyon ke hawaon ke bhi diwaar hain
Meaning
It was not my fate to meet the beloved. Had I lived longer this wait would continue.
11.2K likes
Mirza Ghalib
Koi ummeed bar nahin aati
Koi soorat nazar nahin aati
Maut ka ek din muayyan hai
Neend kyon raat bhar nahin aati
Aage aati thi haal-e-dil pe hansi
Ab hai unki yaad kuch khar khar aati
Meaning
No hope remains. No way out is visible. Death is certain one day.
13.5K likes
Mirza Ghalib
Bazeecha-e-atfaal hai duniya mere aage
Hota hai shab-o-roz tamasha mere aage
Meaning
The world is a playground before me. Night and day a spectacle unfolds.
8.9K likes
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Mujh se pehli si mohabbat mere mehboob na maang
Maine samjha tha ke tu hai to darakhshaan hoga
Meri wafaon ka rang aur tanha main kya hoga
Woh jo hum mein tum mein qaraar tha tum yaad karo
Meaning
Do not ask me for that old love again. I thought with you everything would shine.
11.8K likes
Mir Taqi Mir
Yeh jahan chaar din ka mela hai
Aur aana bhi hai jaana bhi hai
Meaning
This world is a fair of four days. One must come and must go.
10.2K likes
Rumi
Love is the water of life.
Drink it down, let it drown you.
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.
Meaning
Love is life's essential water. We were always already together.
20.3K likes
Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Meaning
Frost reflects on the choices we make in life and how they define our journey.
25.0K likes
Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Meaning
A meditation on duty and the seductive pull of rest and nature.
23.4K likes
Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Meaning
The fleeting nature of beauty and innocence.
18.7K likes
Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Meaning
Desire and hate as forces of destruction.
16.2K likes
Robert Frost
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
Meaning
A profound poem about loneliness and alienation.
12.3K likes
Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
Meaning
Hope as a bird that sings eternally within us, resilient against storms.
20.1K likes
Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The Carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality.
We slowly drove - He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility -
Meaning
Death as a courteous gentleman caller taking us on a journey.
17.6K likes
Emily Dickinson
I taste a liquor never brewed -
From Tankards scooped in Pearl -
Not all the Vintners of the Summer
Could intoxicate me so -
Inebriate of Air - am I -
And Debauchee of Dew -
Reeling - through endless summer days -
From inns of Molten Blue -
Meaning
Intoxication with nature's beauty, surpassing any earthly drink.
11.2K likes
Emily Dickinson
If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or help one robin to his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
Meaning
A life of purpose through simple acts of kindness.
15.8K likes
Emily Dickinson
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry -
Meaning
Books as vessels that carry us to distant lands.
13.4K likes
Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Meaning
The beloved outlasts even summer through the immortality of verse.
26.5K likes
Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Meaning
Love as an eternal, unchanging force beyond time.
24.2K likes
Shakespeare
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Meaning
Real love sees beauty beyond exaggerated comparisons.
18.9K likes
Shakespeare
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate.
Meaning
Thinking of the beloved transforms despair into joy.
15.6K likes
Shakespeare
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Meaning
Aging and mortality deepening love's urgency.
14.1K likes
Kabir Das
Kaal kare so aaj kar aaj kare so ab
Pal mein parlay hoga baaki hai kab
Meaning
Do tomorrow's work today, today's work now.
14.6K likes
William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
Meaning
Apocalyptic vision of civilizational collapse.
16.7K likes
William Butler Yeats
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees,
Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Meaning
A plea for transcendence over the mortality of nature.
11.4K likes
William Butler Yeats
I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses,
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
Meaning
A meditation on the transformation of ordinary people through revolutionary sacrifice.
9.8K likes
Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Meaning
Without dreams life loses its ability to soar and becomes desolate.
17.2K likes
Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I will be at the table
When company comes.
Meaning
A powerful assertion of belonging and dignity in the face of discrimination.
19.4K likes
Rabindranath Tagore
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Meaning
Tagore prayer for an awakened and free India.
21.5K likes