1. Your loyalty is like a spring whose branches the storm rends
That you may gladden me, though tears are my lips' inmates.

2. I'm but a lover; every lover is distraught,
Finding fault with his beloved and deciding to upbraid him.

3. Another may make lover's pretense without being fit;
Man seeks out as companion him with whom he is intimate.

4. I'm the abject one who, unless I halt at the ruins
Like a miser, will lose in the dust his ring of silver.

5. Gazelles of unmixed strain turn from me in love,
As the trained steed shies from the unskilled rider when put to gallop.

6. My eyes were smitten at first glance with your blow,
Then taken captive by a second—he who takes all is a plunderer.

7. Heaven watered you with life that your freshness shine
Like the morning-star's rays which the tent-pegs do not obscure.

8. What need for moonlight is there for the wild cows around you
When dark comes? No moon is absent from you that seeks you.

9. When eyes obtain a glance at you as reward
The wolf with his bashfulness ransom pays, and eagle swift to rapine.

10. A darling whom Beauty loved, or vied with in beauty,
Or confided her secrets to, and chose for her distributer.

11. Before his charms blades are blunted
And to him as booty are led the noble virgins of every clan.

12. The dust clouds of charging horse are but advance-guard to his approach;
The spreading of palm-leaves but final escort of his departure.

13. Never did my eyes view parting before, though I saw it,
Nor heart know aught but what the soul within it had taught it.

14. Let not the censurers, then, blame me, for I have observed
Patience till its alleys around me coil have twisted.

15. A griever weeps at the fading of youth's bloom,
How shall he avoid what destroys and demolishes its builder?

16. The sum of life is youth and the sequel trouble;
Absent the cheek-down's sheen, and present comes age, the defacer.

17. 'Twas no ugliness made people dye the white hair dark,
But that the black is more beautiful and covers white hair.

18. And sweeter than all the water of youth's prime
Is life with honor flashing in the squadron's dust.

19. Upon it are groves no clouds have sprinkled
And branches of oak no doves have sung upon.

20. Over the edging of every embroidered robe are strung
Pearls no stringer has bored through or joined together.

21. You see the land beasts all at peace upon it
Each wild animal paired close with his fellow and intimate.

22. When the wind flows over it, it stirs as if
Intoxicated, kissing its own fair cheeks and leaves.

23. In the features of the Byzantines, though with crown bedeckt,
Is a humiliation to faces whose turbans are but cowls.

24. Their princes' mouths kiss the ground before its carpets
While their souls and acts at it curl the lip and wrinkle the nose.

25. It lifts up the base and brings down the proud;
It fills the ear of each mud-bred mongrel and noble of tent.

26. Their turbans beneath their arms quake with fear of it
More than the resolve flashes in their vinous eyes.

27. It has forces of horse, armies of birds
Which, when it attacks foe armies leave only the skulls.

28. I have threaded the nights and days till I met it
Steadfast on foundation-stones whose height naught reverses.

29. Ways I entered in them no wolf walked
Nor routes unknown where the wild crows direction lost.

30. I saw a moon that no moon equals,
And accosted an ocean no swimmer's breasts have furrowed.

31. For its qualities I was angered that they went without praise,
While poetry bruited what rabble-verses bruited.

32. When I resolved on a distant land, I sped nightly,
My secret untold, and my travel by dark concealed.

33. The Sword of the State—glory taught it—flashed mightily
So glory undimmed in its blade, and its stroke unrestrained.

34. On the neck of the Prince of the Faithful rests its blade
And in grasp of the Lord of the Throne's summit is its hilt.

35. Foes attack it, but they are its slaves;
Wealth they spend, but spoils for its gain.

36. They make light of fate, which to it is subject;
Death they esteem great, but death is its servant.

37. He who named Ali is just, and he named it Sword.
To name it is wrong, and from truth's path they swerved who so named it.

38. No sword to the neck-bone cleaves in its blow
Or severs the joints of the time's upheavals like it.