Kalim kashani
Kalim Kashani was born in Hamedan but spent most of his formative years in Kashan and therefore is known as Abu-Taleb Kalim Kashani. Kalim is among those poets who went to India to seek the favor of the Mongol emperors. Kalim went to India during the reign of Jahangir (1605-27). After a few years, he returned to kashan just to return shortly due to unfavorable poetic climate in Iran at that time. By then the fame of his poetry was widespread enough to gain him an easy entrance into the court of Shah Jahan who made him his poet laureate. Among Kalim's works is Shah Jahan Nameh, , a masnavi tracing the history of the Mongols from Tamerlane down to Shah Jahan. Kalim's best work, however, is to be found among ghazals. Though at times he sacrifices meaning for verbal effect, his poetry offers exquisite conceits mostly based on observation of nature and experience. His best known lyric is the one beginning with the distich:
"Old age arrived, the
intoxication of youthful appetite's gone;
The body's feebleness surpassed its endurance for bearing the heavy
burden."
