Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
In the third watch of the night, the white hairs arrive — the swans landing one by one on the pool of your head. Youth fades. Old age wins. The days are shorter now, and there are fewer of them.
At the very end, the one who lived blind finally begins to see — but Death has already come and taken hold. Everything hoarded, everything held tight as 'mine,' vanishes in a moment. The sharpness of mind goes. The clarity goes. What remains is whatever you actually did with your life.
Says Nanak: in the third watch, let your whole attention rest on God — now, while there is still time.
The swans of old age
Sar hans ulthaṛe ā'e — "the swans, the white hairs, come and land upon the pool of the head." This is one of the most beautiful images in Guru Nanak's poetry, and one of the saddest. In Punjabi and classical Indian poetry, the swan (hans) is a bird of grace, discernment, and beauty — associated with the soul, with purity, with the ability to sift pearls from mud. Here, the swans are the white hairs of old age, landing on the head like birds descending on a still pool.
The image does something double: it makes aging beautiful and elegiac simultaneously. The swans are not ugly. But their arrival means something is ending.
"Everything became a stranger in an instant"
Sabh kichh apunā kar kar rākhi-ā, khin meh bha'i-ā parā'i-ā — "you kept all your things for yourself, calling them mine, mine — but in an instant, they were all lost." The same word appears as in Shabad 129 Pauri3: parā'i-ā (a stranger, belonging to another). The teaching is consistent across both Pehray compositions: the possessive illusion is total and temporary. Everything collapses in an instant.
Repentance that comes too late
Budh visarjī ga'ī si'āṇap, kar avagaṇ pachhutā'e — "your intellect left you, your wisdom departed, and you repent for the evil deeds you committed." There is something profound in the sequence: first the intellect goes, then the wisdom, and only then — in the wreckage — does repentance arrive. Guru Nanak is not condemning the repentant person. He is pointing out that the system of regret-at-the-end is a poor one. The time to turn is now, in the third watch — while something can still be done.
*What do you want to have done with your life by the time the white hairs arrive?*
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI