حقيقت حسن
English title: THE REALITY OF BEAUTY
Beauty one day put this question to God: Why did you not make me eternal in the world?
The answer was that the world is like a picture gallery. The world is the story of the long night of annihilation.
As the nature of change is the basis of its display; only that is beautiful whose reality is decline.
The moon was somewhere near and it heard this conversation; it became well-known in the heaven, the morning star heard.
Having heard from the star the morning related it to the dew, it exposed the celestial world’s secret to earth’s confidante.
The flower’s eye started weeping from the dew’s message; the flower bud’s little heart was injured by this sorrow.
The spring weeping from the garden departed: Youth had come for amusement, sad it departed.
Sources and translator credits
- Original text transcription: Bang-e-Dara — حقيقت حسن — 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: Bang-e-Dara — 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
- Bang-e-Dara English translation at allama-iqbal.com — The Reality Of Beauty — Public digital poem page, retrieved 2026-10-05; pinned to allama-iqbal.com commit 82547635bb6b758c45082084b2f152fc453a8056.Translation by Dr M.A.K. Khalil; English Translation by: Dr M.A.K. KhalilSource