S. R. Faruqi:

The word kaam means 'purpose', and also 'throat'. By having left the verse a little incomplete, he's created a new pleasure. An interpretation can also be that the people who come with the intention of giving up their lives-- to them this blessing is not vouchsafed.

If we recite it in a Sufistic style, then the meaning emerges that mystical-knowers receive whatever the Lord would give. Nothing comes of intentions and efforts, if there wouldn't be a glance of compassion from the Giver.

[See also {584,8}; {770,5}.]

FWP:

SETS == MUSHAIRAH
MOTIFS == SWORD
NAMES
TERMS == IHAM

This might be the third verse in a three-verse verse-set that begins with {96,7}; but it also might be an independent closing-verse that follows at two-verse verse-set. On the whole, I think it's more of an independent closing-verse; its relationship to its two predecessors is really not as close as theirs to each other.

Oh, the delightfulness of that kaam , with its triple meanings! For more on this, see {7,1}. All three senses are, needless to say, quite relevant here: that of 'work, purpose, task', that of 'erotic desire', and especially that of 'throat'. Without that last meaning, the verse would be nothing much.

But above all this is a mushairah verse. It's only when (at the last possible moment, of course) we hit the word talvaar that a sudden shock of awareness reconfigures the whole verse in our minds. Suddenly, instead of an abstract sense of a task left unfinished, we are struck by the vivid image of a sword running through a throat-- or not, since the fate lamented in the verse is that of those aspiring lover/martyrs who are not vouchsafed this most happy fate. The grammar of the line presents them as stretching their throats as far as they can toward the sword, urgently, desperately-- but in vain.