1. My heart casts itself into peril
Unfearing for its ruin

2. And in its ignorance it wounds itself
That lovers aspire to its preservation

3. The heart went astray in passion and in vanity
So when will this wanderer wake from his wandering?

4. A fawn who when you look at him bending
Hearts are taken captive by his grace

5. The smooth branch and the thick entwined
Each pulling at the other’s beauty and brilliance

6. Until when strife brought them to accord
To separate them with a necklace’s string

7. One of tempting glance like a star whose light
Shines in the darkness that obscures it from its peers

8. A beauty despaired of attaining him
And the full moon appeared amid its heavens

9. I cradled a pool for tears
That perhaps her phantom might shimmer in its waters

10. And a pillow the dawn with its branch has bleached
From the length of his night and his weariness

11. The lids of his eyes split from a watcher
Empty of their forms and his neglect

12. His journeys extend and he lies pillowed
His gardens one of his hands and wings

13. Sometimes the falseness of mountains is seen
And sometimes Iraq casts him to his hunting-grounds

14. Time exhausts its people more than its own
Who attempt to straighten its crookedness

15. What have I and what has time whose every
Demand I meet retreats from granting?

16. A time—would that it grew old!—aged by great events
Until it reaps at the cost of its sons

17. The discerning is astonished at its copious troubles
And its little joys

18. Its days fluctuate—the youth finds
Himself confused amid its morn and eves

19. They stirred up yet their final state is unclear
Like the bed of water when clarify

20. Who will lend me a generous ear
That I may complain of a time immersed in injustice?

21. When time betrays with its events
Its enormities are complained of to its giants

22. The debt of religion and world I was given to settle
However much its darkness is lit with its brilliance

23. And to Ahmad son of Ali gathered a loftiness
None before him gathered the like

24. Peerless in thousands of virtues so none
In the age possesses adequacy to match him

25. The gloom of afflictions is not lifted from the youth
Except by seeing his face and his innocence

26. He possessed manliness while the people of his time
Possessed the mortality of initiators to revival

27. Determined whom questioning cannot be borne
Eternally preceding in his giving

28. He expends his treasures but his name remains
Expending them intends their preservation

29. And when he makes wealth die he wakes an heir—
From a hopeful his praisefulness revived

30. Two inherited provisions remain for him:
Thanks and glory with branches building

31. Of two vanishing yet thanks is from
His money and glory from his fathers

32. And the loftiest of his endowments in the eyes
Of mankind is esteem’s disregard from his endowments

33. He continues to smile requesting his pleasure
As if he were a seeker of its first fruits

34. And you see in him a generosity that deceives himself
And misreads what is transcribed of his sons

35. He smiles and reads that he reaps so
From the plenty of his gifts his self-respect pours

36. You see him apologizing without crime
The apology of sinners to the brother asked in need

37. Truly I think how I may express thanks
As one noble in brotherhood has possessed me

38. But I hope that he remains over mankind
In its envied horizon lofty

39. He and the most honorable of his children forever
Like the full-moon amid darkness’ stars