Poetry & Shayari

A poem is not a quotation. Pulling two lines out of a ghazal or a doha and calling it a quote loses the rhyme, the pattern, and usually the argument. We do it anyway, because that is how most people first meet a poet — and then we try to give back what the extract dropped.

Every couplet on this page carries the original script, a Devanagari transliteration, a plain English translation and a note on what the lines are actually doing. Each one was checked against the poet’s own collected work before it went up, which also settles the attribution: a couplet found in Mir’s divan is Mir’s, whatever the forward said. Where a famous verse is popularly credited to the wrong poet, the note says so rather than quietly passing it on. That happens more in shayari than anywhere else on this site.

Mirza Ghalib

Ghalib (1797–1869) wrote in Delhi through the collapse of the Mughal court, and his divan is still the most quoted body of Urdu verse there is — and the most faked. Every couplet here is traceable to the authenticated divan.

All Mirza Ghalib couplets → · Shayari wrongly credited to Ghalib →

Urdu shayari beyond Ghalib

Ghalib is the name everything gets attached to, which leaves eleven other major poets doing their work in his shadow. Mir Taqi Mir, whom Ghalib himself regarded as unmatchable; Momin and Zauq, his Delhi contemporaries; Daagh, raised in the Red Fort and famous for wit rather than anguish; Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, writing from exile; Iqbal, read as poet and philosopher at once; and Hali, Akbar Allahabadi, Hasrat Mohani, Ameer Minai, Chakbast and Wali Dakhani, the poet with whom the Urdu ghazal effectively begins.

Mir Taqi Mir ·
Momin Khan Momin ·
Sheikh Ibrahim Zauq ·
Daagh Dehlvi ·
Bahadur Shah Zafar ·
Allama Iqbal ·
Altaf Hussain Hali ·
Akbar Allahabadi ·
Hasrat Mohani ·
Ameer Minai ·
Brij Narayan Chakbast ·
Wali Dakhani

Sufi poetry — Rumi

Jalaluddin Rumi (1207–1273) wrote in Persian; almost everything quoted in English is a translation, and some of the most shared “Rumi” lines online are loose modern renderings with no close equivalent in the Persian. The verses here come from public-domain translations, and each one names its source.

All Rumi verses →

Bhakti verse — Kabir

Kabir (c. 1440–1518) was a weaver in Banaras whose dohe are claimed by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs alike — and, because they circulated orally for generations before they were written down, are also attached to a great many verses he never composed. These come from Rabindranath Tagore’s English translation of the Songs of Kabir.

All Kabir verses →

Everything tagged poetry