يارب! يہ جہان گزراں خوب ہے ليکن
English title: Lovely, oh Lord, this fleeting world
Lovely, oh Lord, this fleeting world; but why must the frank heart, the quick brain, droop and sigh?
Though usury mingle somewhat with his godship, the white man is the world’s arch-deity;
His asses graze in fields of rose and poppy: | One wisp of hay to genius You deny;
تو عقلمند اور باکمال لوگوں کو گھاس کی ایک پتی بھی عطا نہیں فرماتا؛ فرنگی چند گدھوں کو گلاب اور پھول کے باغ بخش دیتا ہے
His Church abounds with roasts and ruby wines: | Sermons and saws are all Your mosques supply.
Your laws are just, but their expositors | Bedevil the Koran, twist it awry;
Your paradise no one has seen: in Europe no village but with paradise can view.
Long, long have my thoughts wandered about heaven; | Now in the moon’s blind caverns let them sty!
I, dowered by Nature with empyreal essence, | Am dust—but not through dust does my way lie;
Nor East, nor west my home, nor Samarkand, nor Ispahan nor Delhi; in ecstasy;
God‐filled, I roam, speaking what truth I see— | No fool for priests, nor yet of this age’s fry.
My folk berate me, the stranger does not love me: | Hemlock for sherbet I could never cry;
How could a weigher of truth see Mount Damawand and think a common refuse-heap as high?
In Nimrod’s fire faith’s silent witness, not | Like mustard‐seed in the grate, burned splutteringly—
Blood warm, gaze keen, right‐following, wrong‐forswearing, | In fetters free, prosperous in penury,
In fair of foul untamed and light of heart: Who can steal laughter from a flower’s bright eye?
Will no one hush this too proud thing Iqbal | Whose tongue God’s presence‐chamber could not tie!
Sources and translator credits
- Original text transcription: Bal-e-Jibril — يارب! يہ جہان گزراں خوب ہے ليکن — Digital transcription file at commit 39d44fc0c2b8ca25769c4b36e6eac4d90cb42b35; the source dataset does not identify the underlying print edition.Verified against this pinned digital transcription file; not checked against a print edition.Source
- Iqbal Demystified source list: Bal-e-Jibril — Pinned digital dataset commit 39d44fc0c2b8ca25769c4b36e6eac4d90cb42b35; the underlying print edition is not identified by the dataset.Community dataset list; not reconciled against a print edition.Source
- Reviewed exact Persian line-language classifications for the digital Urdu collectionsSource
- Bal-e-Jibril English translation at allama-iqbal.com — — Public digital poem page, retrieved 2026-10-06; pinned to allama-iqbal.com commit 82547635bb6b758c45082084b2f152fc453a8056.Translation by V.G. Kiernan; English Translation by: V.G. KiernanSource
- Bal-e-Jibril: published Urdu field at allama-iqbal.com — Public poem data pinned to allama-iqbal.com repository commit 82547635bb6b758c45082084b2f152fc453a8056; source path allama-iqbal-com-content/bal-e-jibreel/01/16.json.Translation by Not separately identified; The published Urdu field does not separately identify its translator. No English translator credit is reused.Source
- Poems from Iqbal — First edition, 1955Translation by V. G. Kiernan; Published English translations attributed to V. G. Kiernan; the 231 previously imported exact passages remain, with one additional independently reviewed final standalone line at PDF page 100. Each new locator names its exact passage scope.Source