((aari.z-e gul dekh ruu-e yaar yaad
aayaa asad
joshish-e fa.sl-e bahaarii ishtiyaaq-angez hai
1) having seen the cheek/'ariz' of the rose, the face/aspect
of the beloved came to mind, Asad
2) the ebullition/heat/turbulence of the season of spring is {desire/longing/ardor}-producing
((aari.z : 'Appearing, showing or presenting itself, happening, befalling, occurring; intervening, preventing, barring; --an occurrence, accident, casualty; an obstacle, impediment, bar; --the side of the face, the cheek; --reviewer of an army or of a body of soldiers, a muster-master; general of an army'. (Platts p.756)
ruu : 'Face, countenance; appearance, aspect; surface (of the earth, &c.); sake; cause, reason; colour, pretence'. (Platts p.602)
He says, having seen the blooming flowers, oh Asad, we recall our friend's rose-colored cheek. The spring season is a producer of the turmoil of ebullition. (282)
Having seen the cheek of the rose, the beloved's colorful face came to mind. The turmoil of the spring season is ardor-producing.
If by the cheek of the rose we take the presence of springtime in the world to be intended, then the meaning will be that the colorful glory/manifestation of creation inclines us toward the glory/manifestation of the True Beloved.
[In reply to Nazm:] To use dekh on an occasion for dekh kar is now not proper, it is rejected [matruuk]. In Mirza's time dekh and dekh kar were considered equally correct. The poetry of his contemporaries testifies to that. There are so many examples of it that it seems to be the normal custom. Thus to call it 'the poet's weakness' is a proof of unawareness. (393)
SETS == WORD
SPRINGTIME: {13,2}
The commentators basically give the most obvious (and, to my mind, least interesting) meaning: when I see the face/cheek of the rose I think of the beloved's face, and the springtime makes me restless. But I think it's clear that there's more going on in the verse than just that.
This is what I call a verse of word-exploration, one that pivots around the multiple meanings of a single crucial word. Here the word is of course ((aari.z , embedded for even more flexibility in the i.zaafat construction ((aari.z-e gul . Once we realize that the whole verse has been set up to endlessly bounce off or spin off from this one key word, we see how well its multiple possibilities work:
=when I saw the cheek/face of the rose, the radiant face
of the beloved came to mind
=when I saw the rose appear and show itself, then the beloved's appearance/aspect
came to mind
=when I saw the rose as a barrier or impediment (to mystical knowledge? to
transcendance of the merely physical?), then the beloved's aspect came to
mind-- the beloved who is herself also such a barrier; or the Beloved who
is Himself the reality behind the barrier
=when I saw the rose as a general reviewing the troops of spring, then the
imperious and imperial aspect of the beloved came to mind
Needless to say in this kind of verse, the second line with its multi-purpose (physical and metaphorical) words joshish and ishtiyaaq , and its noncommittal grammar (which doesn't connect itself in any one specific way to lover, beloved, or rose), is broad and versatile enough to allow for all these readings, with room to spare.
Compare {27,8}, another subtle verse about a situation in which the beloved comes to mind.
Nazm:
To see dekh on an occasion for dekh kar is proper in poetry, but the poet's weakness can be perceived. (224)