S. R. Faruqi:

In the opening-verse there's nothing special. It has been included in order to create the form of a ghazal. The 'Ustad' kind of people will declare the rhyme-words aasmaa;N and samaa;N to have a 'concealed repetition' [ii:taa-e ;xafiyah] [since samaa;N can be a variant form of aasmaa;N]. But as we have already seen in

{291,1},

{293,1},

{302,1},

etc., Mir has casually used such rhymes. In the poets up until Ghalib's time, the example of aasaa;N and insaa;N is present. But some 'Ustads' who have no feel for the spirit of poetry, and whose stock in trade is crooked/absurd arguments and villainy, will say that 'the elders' have said that between samaa;N and aasmaa;N there is a 'concealed repetition'.

In our poetry, unnecessary rules and restrictions began in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in a reaction against Hali and his group-- that if poetry is said by them to consist of poems about the rainy season and the love of one's country, then on our part the test of ustad-ship is that poetry should be made even more severely and irreduceably a 'skill/craft'. That is, the way to keep it protected it from new ideas is to narrow its range even further.

Now let's turn to Mir's opening-verse. The use of aana:n fa))aana:n (with the scansion of long-long short-long-long) is interesting, because this is according to the Arabic pronunciation. In Urdu it's both written and pronounced as aana:n faaana:n (scanned long-long long-long). But Mir has used it this way elsewhere too. From the second divan [{866,4}]:

nayaa aana:n fa))aana:n us ko dekhaa
judaa thii shaan us kii har zamaa;N me;N

[I all at once saw him/her anew
his/her condition/nature/glory was different in every era]

Certainly {866,4} has had some effect on the present opening-verse. But in the opening-verse the idea has been kept ambiguous. Apparently it's an account of something like intoxication, or of a meditative state. But taken all in all, the verse doesn't have the force that's in the ;husn-e ma:tla(( verse [{1882,2}]. Then, {866,4} is apparently on the theme of a verse from Surah ul-Rahman [Quran 55:29]. In that verse shaan has its original meaning. It is translated by N. J. Daud as 'Every day some new task employs him'. Mir's verse is based on the Sufis' theme that 'no name of God Most High is ever in abeyance'. The creation is constantly obliterated and then keeps coming into existence.

In the present opening-verse there's the mention of changing events, and constantly new affairs, passing over the heart (or before the eye of the imagination). Or it's possible that the reference here might be to some mental events; for example, after taking some 'psychedelic drug' the mind feels that some new world opens before it. If such is the case, then this verse will be judged to be out of the ordinary.

FWP:

SETS == A,B; FILL-IN
MOTIFS == SOUND EFFECTS
NAMES
TERMS == RHYME; VERSE-SET

This is one of the very few ghazals in the kulliyat from which SRF has selected every single verse to include in his intikhab.

The first three verses can be read as a sort of unofficial verse-set. They can all stand on their own, but their strong family resemblance is impossible to miss. And reading them together makes them richer and more complex.

Since one of the meanings of samaa;N is 'like, alike, same' (see the definition above), it's also a good touch to juxtapose it directly with aur , which here means 'another, other, different'. And all those rhythmically positioned aan and aa;N syllables have a certain hypnotic effect of their own.

And then, what is the relationship between the two lines? Is the first line a cause, and the second line an effect? Or are both lines sequential effects of some other cause?

Really this is what I call a 'fill-in' verse, with language so broad, vague, and abstract that you can conceive it to be about almost any kind of change in situation or perspective that you like.