A Vow
A Vow - form Summary
Ghazal Form Shapes the Voice
This poem is a ghazal from Ghalib's Diwan-e-Ghalib, composed as a sequence of autonomous couplets that shift speakers and addressee. Rather than a single narrative, each couplet presents a distinct emotional moment—invitation, resigned taunt, bitter pledge—while a single speaker threads them together. The ghazal’s compact, self-contained lines allow abrupt turns between irony and earnestness, so the vow in the final couplet reads both as personal refusal and as rhetorical stance. Readers should expect elliptical expression and thematic repetition rather than continuous story.
Read Complete AnalysesBeing kind at any time you please, you can call out for me, for I am not like time once past, again can never be. Of rival's taunts, in weakened state, why should complaints unfold, it's merely talk and not my head which I cannot uphold. O! tyrant, poison is not found, else for my sorrow's sake, is it a vow to never meet you that I cannot take?
Feel free to be first to leave comment.