1. Aid your brother when misfortunes befall
And say not "For what purpose was he called?"

2. Help with a healing, well-chosen word
For aid with the blade is best when harm nears

3. Go quickly to one whose glance returns
The lion springs only when you startle it

4. Wag the tongue of your sword in response
For he who's answered with the tongue won't be answered

5. Give him a glance and your sword together
From the eyelid of your eye and the eyelid of one polished

6. One whose prayers take precedence when he calls
Is best if you want to relieve one of his burdens

7. Song grew less and cries more strident
Looking to you to ask “What’s the cause?”

8. Draw the sword of al-Mashrafi then ask
And begin by offering the staff before the sermon

9. If he won’t spring to defend the lad
Then he plunged into danger without an ally

10. Resolve to die and you will live
For the day of youth is predestined and prescribed

11. No fleeing prolongs the inevitable
But rather increases pursuit when one flees

12. Appointed terms do not move from their place
So seize the chance to gain mention

13. Be the son of a day containing its pride
Don’t settle for ancestors, no matter how noble

14. The noblest people, mother and father,
Are those who disdained to rise due to mother or father

15. Let no worldly heights make you content
That it's said you are of noble origin

16. Take pride when your father is called a traveller
Until when the son is mentioned he is chosen

17. Grasp the hand of an ally in victory
And come, let us fling stars vigorously

18. Resolve, though terrors turn away
In the turmoil of earth for a troubled people

19. In every land a partisan has emerged
And a pulpit for one lost and astray

20. What can one who wants wealth or knowledge
Hope for from his time, possessing honor or propriety?

21. The earth is in chaos, completely
Not a handspan but with a war unleashed

22. I'm amazed at events until when
Repeatedly, nothing remained strange

23. How long will I complain of echoing round
And see in the land no untainted place?

24. Superiority is superiority of money today
If they vie while lineage is now the bowstaff

25. How many reproachers when I departed from praising
I said to, if with two robes he'd proposed

26. I sent him away with a lump in his throat and never
Would you see one more weary than a loving heart that gets no love

27. And an ignorant one whom my enmity deluded
Who didn't know in what vessel he sipped

28. My eyes are magnets drawing every
Wonder of the age, if kinship pulled it near

29. In what land have my feet trod
And for disasters, when they came, clamor arisen?

30. Between Iraq and the mountains, wandering
While fate gapes with fierce teeth

31. Daily, a visitation for nations
For interest, not nations or a cause

32. And hopes fill up the bucket while the lad
Holds back the camel-train and hardship with his palm

33. One exerts to ready the means of success
While the source, unless effort blesses, is strange

34. And shows resentment when the road stretches out
What time is resentful to one who resents?

35. Life passes, so what can be hoped for
From gold that comes when life has gone?

36. And all this while my heart remembers
Days of friendship that did not end or get cut off

37. And a close friend, when he glances
Toward the beloved, stirs his shoulders in enchantment

38. His brow and cheek are dawn and twilight
His cheek and mouth are wine and sweet

39. I met him and patience was my ample armor
So charm undid propriety and snatched it away

40. Our hearts had been bound by a covenant now passed
To love, but it held firm and was transformed

41. Can I convey to them, though passion carries me off
When sometimes the distant draws near?

42. My life was secretly one of joy
When the reed-pipe softly whispered to me

43. Fate busied my eye away from me while I slept
Until the night of my head had fled

44. Youth was a cloak of nights
Lavished on me by bygone eras

45. Taken back, after letting me enjoy it
While fate is worst when it takes back what it gave

46. Greetings O our days from a time
Soon to be extinct, never repeated

47. Days when the line of grey hair began
And the raven of estrangement swooped

48. So today the sermon said to the eye “Stay awake!”
And remoteness said to the furrowed brow “Vigil keep!”

49. After my intimates who departed
And left my patience robbed and plundered

50. A human eye not visited by any but them
Unless one who met it let fall a curtain of tears

51. Perhaps the inhabitants of my heart fancied
That I was secure from their absence or had endured

52. No! By Him who dispatched meteors to people
Counted, apportioned in order

53. To the sky seven, and one
To earth, with favor over the meteors

54. A meteoric mission never clothed for us
The likes of it, though eras donned mantles

55. A shining dew for which delegations are rained
For in his hands forever are ten clouds

56. The new moon never gave by nature
But a train following it one day across the clouds

57. If the spheres possess a rising fortune
It is praised by people of the moment it's granted

58. The world is most fortunate, if fortunate it be
While the most likely prevails over its opposite

59. One who loved glory until indeed
He would have seized it from his father if not inherited

60. He disobeys the reproachers in bounty and only
Disobeyed the one censuring him, a lad of munificence

61. He has constant prayers of prescription and supererogation
He tends what he does with benefaction

62. And many a kindness of a newborn not yet nurtured
I have not seen one with finer behavior than he

63. Or who safeguards his honor from the demands of fine manners better
O you following the path to the heights

64. In trailing a star to the horizon growing weary
His actions praise him, and our poetry

65. Speaks well so we feel in it no burden
No lofty sphere has turned in our words praising him

66. Unless its meaning were the celestial pole
When the warriors dyed their lances red

67. His pen, when he wrote, made them shy
A gaze's glance, but with a single glance

68. He could do with it what he wished of accord and dissent
He is graced with a black, smooth forelock

69. You'd see it has white fingers twisting
When his stature stood straight in its trunk

70. He surged ahead in the tracks of bookleaves
He has a hand whose traces are sublime

71. A drop when he gives, lightning if he writes
Discerning in the secrets of affairs, judicious

72. Guiding remedy for dominion from every chagrin
Counseling the sultan of an age where the land

73. Shines when he assumes the crown
A lord, when he drove armies to battle

74. No shelter remained above the land for the winds
They survive epochs wherever he arranged them

75. Seeking the training targets while stocks last
When he conquered, the breadth of his horses

76. Veiled the sun at dawn until it hid behind the curtains
With each lingering twilight-red steed

77. Girded, rising where the sun had set
He rallied his steeds to battle

78. Until he won praise for his return
Content with his own counsel without a companion

79. While truth lies in the hands of the wise as play
As though he showed contempt for his like

80. So he tossed the horsehair and prevailed

81. Still not losing the kingdom nor you failing it
Dispensing the dues of hopefuls as prescribed

82. I said to my heart - though fate always thwarts -
“Tomorrow”, but it did not weep, just poured out

83. Do not despair if fortune betrays once
How often the dawn proved true after lying!

84. Take it as a eulogy whose author
Dictated the cascade of ideas condensely

85. A greeting, though from one visiting
Who delivered what passion carried far away

86.
If one year sufficed with a day

87. And meeting face to face had no veil
Then a stance from the lad, singular

88. On a peak, fulfilling the duty of a lifetime's sum
It came to you from the region of meanings, a garden

89. Gathering the choicest blossoms of speech
A gift of Nayrouz which came to you fresh

90. So take, for the Persian feast, from an Arab tribe
And delight in the visiting omen of good fortune

91. Anticipating thousands more of its like in glory