Increase my bewilderment through the excess of my love for…
Quote
Increase my bewilderment through the excess of my love for you, and pity a heart ablaze with your love.
Arabic original
زدني بفرط الحب فيك تحيرًا، وارحم حشًى بلظى هواك تسعّرا.
What it means
The poet asks to enter love more deeply rather than escape it. Fire and bewilderment convey an intensity beyond ordinary self-command, giving the verse both emotional and contemplative force.
The story behind this quote
This line opens a poem by Ibn al-Farid. His work belongs to Sufi poetry, where the language of love can carry a spiritual reading as well as emotional power.
The request is paradoxical: the lover asks for greater bewilderment when we might expect a wish for peace. Yet the second movement calls for pity. The coexistence of desired intensity and suffering gives the line its movement, which translation seeks to preserve without reproducing its rhyme.
The linked transcription has spelling variants; the Arabic original keeps the wording already published on Quotesay.
The source
ديوان ابن الفارض, مطلع القصيدة
The text appears in the indicated source. A traditional attribution remains distinct from proof of authorship: see the context.