لائوں وہ تنکے کہیں سے آشیانے کے لیے
آنکھ مل جاتی ہے ہفتاد و دو ملت سے تریایک پیمانہ ترا سارے زمانے کے لیے
English translation
You are contending with the seventy two nations; one goblet of yours suits the whole world best.*
*Allusion to the Hadith of the Holy Prophet S.A.W. that the Muslim Ummah would be divided into seventy two sects. However, this verse reminds Muslims that the Holy Qur’an has been sent down to guide the entire world and unite the whole mankind into a super national society and State. So the Muslims, who are its first recipients and custodians, should keep their own brotherhood intact instead of being divided into seventy-two mutually contending sects.
Translated by Dr M.A.K. Khalil
About this couplet
This is couplet 3 of 7 in “لائوں وہ تنکے کہیں سے آشیانے کے لیے” (Laaoon woh tinkay kahin se aashiyanay ke liye) in the section The Ghazals 1, from Allama Muhammad Iqbal's Urdu book Bang-e-Dara (بانگِ درا), published in 1924.
Read it in the poem۳ / ۷