1. For a flirtatious girl or a singing gazelle was the curtain raised
For a wild one, not for a wild one, is there shyness

2. Her aversion startled, startling, they pulled
At her gowns and necklaces and waist and hips

3. And it seemed from her waving veil that
A line swayed for us, though we had no luck

4. The increase of white hair yet decrease of my increase
And the power of passion, yet from my power it's weakness

5. My blood evaporated, from me from ardour what's in her
From ardour in me and the longing to me and to her allies

6. And whoever stripped her of her clothes
The poetry dressed her in clothes other than hers

7. And she met me, two pomegranate branches of a bending bough
Sway with a full moon, held by its crescent

8. Certainly, O loved one, you have connected and joined us
So neither does our home come near, nor does our life clear up

9. I repeat my woe, if only woe could fulfill a need
And I increase my fervor, if only it could cure anguish, ardor

10. Bitterness in passion hidden like poison in honey
I ignorantly delighted in it, and in delight lies ruin

11. So it destroyed me, and what my soul did not destroy
Is as if for Abu-l-Faraj the judge, besides her, a cave

12. Of little provisions, if eggs and chickens
Were like his views, eggs and feathers wouldn't enrich

13. He takes the army's place with his frown
And his words overpower speech with merely a letter

14. And if he missed generosity, his hand would yearn
For it, the yearning of a friend who left his friend

15. A scholar whom knowledge took root in his heart
Mountains, mountains of earth, next to them a mere hill

16. A generous one whose palm in good and evil leapt up
Lofty, time wished that his name were palm

17. And he came between people in every master
Among people, except in his mastership, dissident

18. They ransom him, as if their blood
For the sake of his passion in their veins keeps pace

19. Standing in two pauses of thanks and attainer
So his attainer is a stop, and their thanks is a stop

20. And when we lost his like, our disclosure remained
Upon him, so the loss remained and the disclosure was stripped

21. And imaginations did not wander in the greatness of his status
More than the gaze wandered in his beauty

22. Nor did the malice and harm of his enviers attain
Greater than what his outstanding merit attained

23. His contemplation is knowledge and his speech is wisdom
And his essence religion and his appearance composure

24. He killed the winds of vileness, though they were tempests
And the refuge of nobility destroys while the path of dew pardons

25. So we have not before Ibn Al-Husayn seen fingers
When they pour down, the blood of injustice is shy

26. Nor a striver in scarcity of glory attaining
Through his deeds what description does not reach

27. And we have not seen a thing that bears burdens like he bore
And regards the world as slight and bears with composure

28. Nor has the vast sea sat for a purpose
With furnishings beneath it and ceiling above

29. So how strange of me to attempt describing him!
Papers and books regarding him are exhausted

30. And from the abundance of accounts of his virtues
A class passes by him, and another class comes

31. And virtues emerge from him as if they are
The folds of a beloved which a watcher never tires of

32. I headed to you while the hopeful headed to him
Many, but not like the bent tail

33. Nor white silver and flakes the same
Benefits for the toiler, and between them exchange

34. You are not without rain hoped for besides you
Nor the utmost of generosity which successors succeeded

35. Nor one in the mortal world among a group
Nor part of a whole, but you are the feeble one

36. Nor feeble so that feebleness follows his feebleness
Nor the feebleness of feebleness, but like it a thousand

37. My judge, this right which you deserve
I erred, not two-thirds this, nor half

38. My sin is my falling short, and I have not come praising
With my sin, but rather I came to ask you pardon