Fayyaz's Reply to Mirza Mohammad Saeed

You, in whose hand the page is bright as a lover's face, you trace lines on water without even a pen. You who reveal the wonders of creation: your nature is more eloquent in speech than a veiled eye is in glances. The tall palm of ambition in the garden of your mind shelters a thousand beneath it, like the sun. You said my little poem was not what it should be, yet there was nothing wrong with this speck's words but humility. But the reproach was more than this servant could bear; my small lament did not deserve so much rebuke. You are far too troubled by my moaning, when in truth the sea is never shaken by the churning of a single drop. I am no fit match for your reproach; one should drink this wine only as far as one can hold. For someone like me to speak of granting you a favor is as absurd as a drop claiming to give bounty to the clouds. My only wish was this: that in youth and fresh spring the eye of good manners not fall asleep through carelessness. If you gained anything from me, the skill is yours; it suits the moon to receive its light from the sun. Grace comes from God, and the source of grace is God too; in the channel the water moves, yet only step by step. There is nothing but nearness and distance, valley and spring; the flood rushes downward from the heights below. If you learned from me and became better than me, the moon on the fourteenth night is no less than the sun. A perfect student is often greater than the master; a torch is lit from a candle sheltered in glass. In short, with this question that holds your thought in chains, you have sewn shut the lips of my speech, like a bud, against any reply.