1. The rain of good fortune watered the abode of my poetry,
How good is the living when intimacy returns as a visitor!

2. O you who return with their songs to the horizon,
The stars shone brightly when you returned to its chambers.

3. Your lover gathered longings overflowing
His longings in the heart’s core that created them.

4. O lord of a slow night after you
In it, the eyelid’s captive remained awake.

5. Sickness weakened him when you were long absent,
A body that refused to age its secrets.

6. Until he returned in joy with the wine of nearness
After the separation that had worried him.

7. How wonderful a heart fluttering with love for you!
No bird was luckier among lovers in flight.

8. No tears were more deserving to flow in remembrance if
Flashes of lightning stirred his thoughts.

9. Live long, minister of piety and righteousness, fulfilled
In reward and remembrance, he began and ended it.

10. And O Solomon, sovereign in his rule
To whom no secret dares to profess equality.

11. If Damascus were imagined as a person, you would be its companion,
And the collector of Damascus, its overseer.

12. You built two palaces, which offered thanks,
Awake, who is this sleeper that no grateful one touched?

13. Whoever sees you and the monuments made clear through you
Sees Solomon and beholds his buildings.

14. In the Damascus Mosque are glistening pillars
That inspire poetry and initiate its meanings.

15. Good fortune beheld the pillars of an establisher
Who almost made its stones weep after you.

16. In the niches, the practice of piety has a tradition
Its platforms almost swayed in awe.

17. In its heights, praise of you is a lamp
That ascends above the oil lamps.

18. In protecting Damascus and the land, they are one,
A remembrance that reveals the scent of musk in its protector.

19. May God and the Sultan, whose pen
Brought goodness, be pleased with it. Ibn Sahl cannot compete with it

20. Where people and government praised
The one praised, his supreme qualities singled him out.

21. Inhale in the Highest his excellence and generosity Jafar,
And the devotion of his reconstruction and determination its restoration.

22. How many doors of victory and doors to relief
You opened, O winner of the race and the one who attained it.

23. The elements of our Master were purified
And a favor followed them, so the first thing it purified was his elements.

24. Fear of God frightened it, frightening
The lions of wastelands from settling near it.

25. And an aspiration rode the meteors of stars, so
The horizons cannot equal it.

26. Generosity from two concealed and revealed hands
Daring cannot compete with it.

27. He averted his gaze from the lowest temptation
And turned his insights to the highest essence.

28. So let praise, the traveler of eulogy for him
Delight him. If asked what I chose from it, I say all of it.

29. And how much hungry honor says you mended
The inside and outside of an anxious one.

30. And how much good crafts say, is there not
More profitable merchandise among the two types than its merchant?

31. So let him be delighted by robes that remain
Good omened through appointment which actualized it.

32. White and green, as if the brocade by them
Were clouds that watered the garden and made its flowers shine.

33. The slogan of the minister’s blessings called him
To the blessed homes, so he completed its rituals.

34. He extended his fingertips, which had blessings,
To which the doubled join their wrists.

35. Branches of sustenance with him, or stars of guidance,
So say its flowers, or say its shining stars.

36. O overflowing sea of generosity and nobility,
If you will, perfect it, or if you will, make it abundant.

37. O you of skill, when I praised him in eulogy
I prepared for a sea its pearls.

38. O you who say to the open country when I praise him
God singled out the praised and the poet.

39. Take it quickly from one who illuminated
Its lines with light, and light his thoughts.

40. If I publish his eulogies over my lifetime
I have folded love for him in my conscience.