A vintage mushairah verse. The first line is uninterpretably broad and abstract. The first half of the second doesn't make clear what's going on. The punch-word is withheld till the last possible moment, and then it knits the whole thing together. It opposes itself both to the reproaches/accusations in the first line, and to the earlier in the line. And it also connects with the secondary meaning of -- which is 'desire' as well as 'work'. The lovely, perfectly balanced second line, suggesting the hopelessness of struggle, has an overtone of clear-eyed fatalism. Reproaching her and calling her 'unkind' won't make her kind-- but then, flattering her and calling her 'kind' won't make her kind either. (If it would, the lover would have made use of such a ploy long ago.) The basic truth is that nothing will make her kind. The speaker-- who may be a friend or well-wisher-- is trying to reason with the lover; or else the lover's rational self is trying gently, compassionately, to reason with his passionate self. The rational self or speaker sees that the lover's passion is pursuing a lost cause-- and even doing so in a counterproductive way. But then, it's not as though the rational self has anything more promising to offer. Note for grammar fans: In the first line, instead of the usage would nowadays be . For more such examples, see 1,3 . graphics/quarrel.jpg