Like the previous verse, 110,3 , this one too is a classic mushairah verse. The first line is broad and vague, giving us listeners little clue of what is to come. What kind of a limit? Why should there be one? What kind of punishment? Only after a suitably suspense-building interval do we get to hear the 'mischievous' [] second line. We learn that the speaker is negotiating with God about, it seems, the fires of hell. There ought to be some kind of limit to his torment, he is urging, because after all he's only a sinner, not an infidel. This is one of those verses of theological vocabulary, such that it does seem to be addressed wholly or chiefly to God, not to a human beloved. It seems that the speaker might even be already enduring the torments of hell. Or else he's sure that he will endure them, and already knows what they will like, and has sufficient foreknowledge and status to have bargaining power with God. He presses his case with energy and wit (though perhaps with an underlying alarm). After all, a mere sinner is not nearly as evil and culpable a creature as an infidel! He seems to use the privileged position of an intimate, to urge God to reconsider, to urge Him to be reasonable. The tone is everything. And the punch-word -- here spelled for the sake of the rhyme -- is withheld, in true mushairah-verse style, until the last possible moment. For other such verses that seem to be addressed to a divine Beloved, see 20,10 . graphics/hellfire.jpg