Why should I want to hide it? I like Paul Verlaine. He is a good poet. He does not complicate things and says what he feels with unmatched lyricism. His accent is soft, almost a whisper. Among the great poets, only Rimbaud comes near him in these qualities.

“Et dans les longs pils
de son voile,
Qui palpite aux brizes
d’automne,
Cache et montre au coeur
qui s’étonne,
La vérité comme une étoile.”

(And in the long folds of her veil, which flutters in the autumn breeze, hides and shows to an astonished heart, the truth like a star.)
But why is it that, with age, one becomes less generous with other cultures, to other places. An old-style house in Thatta reminds one that, some two centuries and a half back, the town was a great centre of culture, that great poetry was written here in the soft light of the candle. Yet, the places, the scenes that pleased one in some renowned parts of the world no longer do so. Though I grant that foreign literature still appeals to one. Can one forget Pushkin? Or Lermontov? A work of literature can be enjoyed only when internalised.

“Except our hearts, we have not anything
“And there we dwell and never strike a light.”
(R.M. Rilke)

The ghazal fulfils this function the most successfully among our genres of poetry. Professor Aal-e-Ahmed Suroor states that ghazal is not the whole Urdu poetry. No one will disagree with him. However, in every developed body of poetry, there is usually a dominant genre, which imposes its mode of thought and spirit of expression upon others. The dominant mode in Urdu is the ghazal.
Nazeer was long neglected as unrefined. Imam Baksh Sehbai’s well-regarded anthology of poetry ranges from Wali to Momin and contains Naseer, Moolchand and Mamnoon, but ignores Nazeer. (Ghalib and Atish are also missing, but for other reasons.) However, as our literary standards rose under European influence, we recognised Nazeer as one of the greatest of Urdu poets. He wrote in nearly every genre of Urdu poetry and as Faiz says: “Nazeer’s verse has neither Mir’s pathos, nor Ghalib’s profundity; nor yet Dagh’s refinement. But his poetic language has force, élan and passion.” He quotes: