1. To what aim do you restrain the graceful gazelles,
If you have gone beyond Najd, you are no lover,

2. My weeping was but sincere advice,
Passion mounted me, my sighs drove me on.

3. Since they moved stealthily away I learned that I,
Rank among the clouds, flashing with lightning.

4. O raven, you have croaked regarding them,
So follow their tracks, croaking after them.

5. I asked the suns which had struck their tents,
From the sadness of parting, it pitched them a pavilion.

6. Why have you made our eyes westwards,
And made their abodes eastwards?

7. How come their tents do not guard them
When every glance comes to them as a thief?

8. She wore necklaces so she did not doubt
That her breasts were strung with choking necklaces.

9. And the lovely ones borrowed from their beauties
Rings to gird themselves with belts.

10. Heal my heart, I thought that you
Were stepping lightly when you shot something throbbing,

11. Yet the first suspicion was not false,
He who averts fate comes correspondingly.

12. If the wounds of parting are probed
They testify that the arrow was wayward.

13. Restrain my tears lest they wander astray
As if I steady a fleeing slave.

14. And owing to avoiding the watcher I was,
On the day of departure, hypocritical in love.

15. How many events have I concealed in the darkness
Where imagination crept in stealthily!

16. When on a pitch black night a horseman came to me,
He leaped upon me and embraced me.

17. The house did not prevent me from seeking them,
Though it offered a pleasing sight to the eye.

18. When you see the rain giving life to her vegetation,
You see a creature along with the Creator.

19. He makes the hair sprout on the sides of the hills,
To which the cheek of summer is a smooth-shaven priest.

20. So their forelocks took on feathers,
And their breeches put on striped cloth.

21. The doves sang in their nests,
You would think them, in their nests, bursting forth.

22. The morning breeze of Najd you'd reckon
A musk pouch bursting in its meadows.

23. I did not see the caravan save gathering together,
Looking, listening or conversing or dozing.

24. Away with a time if it draws near its guests
And gives them to drink the water of wishes to taste!

25. Generosity through it is sluggish, you see not in its market
For generosity a sincere haggler.

26. A marvel that my tongue can speak
In a time which has silenced the caves.

27. Most of those who inform him about his people
Appear in the religion of love to be trustworthy.

28. A people whom baseness has dug trenches
About the sanctuary of their wealth.

29. It’s all the same whether I look at them cheerful
Or return to them with an imploring camel.

30. I sought their oath of allegiance upon my hand
But I did not find among them one to clasp my palm.

31. Except for the beauty of the state, the shining noble one,
Trustworthy in taking hold of his abundant stream,

32. Had the days taken hold of his good deeds
They would have poured from his palm in floods.

33. One whom the cloud has wept over,
Thundering and lightening loftily.

34. Nature endowed him with pure pages
From the manner of generosity, so he came to be skillful.

35. We have not seen the like of him before,
Nor do you see after him a fulfiller of hopes truthful.

36. If hopes are cross-pollinated from his appointment,
Soon you will see them bearing fruit.

37. Virtues which inhabit him in a garden
Which gratitude has planted with groves.

38. Whoever lives speaks his praises,
And whoever passes on deposits his eulogies.

39. If you say, “How excellent are his features!"
You say, “And how noble his traits!"

40. Repeating kindnesses, saying,
With his cup, and his morning draughts and his evening ones.

41. Praise does not look good from anyone but him,
Nor do you see it fitting for other than him.

42. He renewed in the paths to glory, ways,
And increased in the limit of brightness, procedures.

43. One day for hunting he chooses the men,
The weapons and the excellent steeds.

44. Another day a hunt that gathered its tools:
The hawks, the dogs and the leopards,

45. So one time he overwhelms them as horsemen,
Another time hunts them as wild beasts,

46. Had war not delighted him he would not have been
For the plumage of warriors, outstanding.

47. Were it not for him, the lance on the day of battle would not thrust
Nor the sword slash.

48. When the archers don their coats of mail
Like mirrors, he returns them as blossoms.

49. If he shook a maghshoor in his right hand
He would unleash it with his might as lightning.

50. He only acquires an ignorant sword
And only prepares a supple spear.

51. If you wish to know their actions
Then ask the ribs and the joints.

52. I have no care for enemies after he
Makes the wolves the most loyal of friends.

53. When the affair becomes complicated, they toss it to him,
He was the praying one and the first to attain success.

54. Therefore he reached the highest rank with the Imam
And towered in the view of the King.

55. Days will not decrease your rank
And I do not see you through time save ever rising.

56. Lasting as long as time commands
Or prohibits, outstanding and unique.