1. Your open book brought glad tidings to me
Of smoothed paths to meet, though warnings deter

2. So say this news brought joy, even if
Before what we hope, horrors occur

3. Then longing seized me, leaving me confused
How can my heart be calmed, when you are far?

4. And how remains what won't cease, being anxious
For you, while in the dens there are wild beasts?

5. O best of those whose friendship my hands held
And hopes for him, in his heights, proven true

6. What can I say, when my heart left me
My body, and the twilight of parting came

7. How I grieved with pangs of separation, but
None like this did wandering ever grieve me

8. And before the twilight I feared its advent
As if that fear, beforehand, portended it

9. If days of our partition drag on
And hours without you pass, each a life

10. Then keep my heart residing in your abode
Give it not to longing, for longing kills

11. Where is my hearing from what the blamers say?
I am preoccupied with estrangement and the twilight

12. And the path of solace has vanished from my eyes
But I have no way to it, what a pity!

13. How little is passion, O tranquil heart
Compared to what the lover faces, how little!

14. With passion Qays became obsessed with Layla
And with it 'Urwa and Jameel died

15. Excuse the lover, his madness is enough
His wasting away, and his leanness

16. Do not suppose one who left homelands
Will be aroused by the morn and the evening

17. The full moons traverse the horizon
Bearing no concern but the disappearance

18. Each sun that lights above a staff
Sways with it a pliant, bending dune

19. No, and the traveler who left homelands
Is not gladdened by dawn or by evening

20. Whenever the blamers rebuke him
He sees blood competing with sighs and wailing

21. Like my passion in separation from the good king
He who is hoped for and relied upon

22. O leader of armies, O most just of rulers
In his actions and his words

23. You judge with truth, though the mountains
Of the earth around you crumble and disappear

24. So by what, O master of rulers, have you judged
Me to be spurned, when I am devoted?

25. Is it one who dislikes life or one
Whose successive breaths are burdens upon him?

26. Do not blame me, for it is a sign
Of cutting off the symbols of honor I owe you

27. I have customs, one is corresponding
And you are the gracious one, benevolent

28. The rest you have made me needless of
With gifts, until I had no more coveting

29. Excuse me from cutting it off, for it is to me a pride
With which I attain the heights and endure

30. If only you could see into my heart
Loyalty would appear to you, the new companion

31. And you'd see what you planted of gifts
Has no limit to its yields, however plentiful