1. With a crescent-like radiance his cheek shone bright
Yet to the folk of beauty his state seemed slight

2. His face he hid from me, left his abode bare
Alas for a face whose memory I recite

3. And hid from me a body as though it were
Amidst separation's woe, a wand so slight

4. What harm if Hind's tents by me were rapped
When I myself am but a phantom's blight?

5. The sun she is, remote, resplendent, gay
But on the bough she is with shadows dight

6. Her hair's memory and troth my passion feed
As though to bind the sun of dawn outright

7. I know not if her glances me o'erwhelm
With the dark of lids or the sheen of light

8. Sleep is forbidden to my eyes, and hers
Suffices if the pillow she makes right

9. Passion has scored his cheek, traits nurtured fair
By beauty, for Ibn Hilal's delight

10. By your life, no lover's excuse he makes
But with the black of glances roams forthright

11. Toward him the eyes incline, as though they are
My fiery glances; hither, thither they smite

12. I see the hair of grey portending loss
The crescent's rise warns me of my plight

13. Why is it when my hair whitens with age
Straying in thought of the beloved recurs outright?

14. Let the spear support the shoulders of my dear ones
For the shoulders of angelic folk are my right

15. Leave me as days their vicissitudes
With patience at the hands of fate cast outright

16. For Ibn Rayyan I see ascendancy
Where poesy's fortune clarity gained forthright

17. A chief whose praises up to the sublimest heights run
Everlastingly, with no fatigue or blight

18. I rejoiced in the sheen of his brow, but nay
'Twas in the sheen of the brilliant spheres so bright

19. She said, as her beauty increased by his attributes
"God guard my beauty from the eye of spite"

20. The pillar of knowledge and bounty, revered and feared
For a day of action or a day of recitation upright

21. His blessings color virtues one after another
What excellent talents buttressed by the great!

22. With his palms he supplicates for life, his prayer
Making the water well up, surge and alight

23. Bashful, more bashful grew his brow
We know not who of us deserved the right

24. No defect but his preceding gifts,
What eloquent one complains of insights?

25. For him the feather flows like conversation
From his intellect being honed polite

26. If pages are widened, his lines relate
Like gazelles beneath a veil held tight

27. And if discord calls for tumult and fray
Say in brief: “Gird up your loins for the fight!”

28. With ease his mention blows musk-scented winds
So I cheapen spreading fragrance far and wide

29. For creation, his hands' benefits came to fruition
And those hoping for bounty round him unite

30. He has taken up generosity, Hatim's way
Greetings to the ever-flowing spring of might!

31. Among the people are poesy and fray's horsemen
Yet for God, what excellent men!

32. They enliven some days of sojourn with friendship
And by long prostrations bring nights to life

33. Is there one purer of soul and nobler of stock
One loftier and far from resemblance or parallel?

34. You've preceded for all time in virtue
And every man in praise of you is a follower!