1. I say, while the secret grows in my heart,
And my tears from it are not shed in sorrow,

2. When the afflicted is patient with tribulation,
His afflictions become reward in the end.

3. Though between my despair and hopes
There was nothing but a period close at hand,

4. So the gloating enemy turned away from my right,
And from my left the envious observer.

5. And I returned to rhymes like a lover returning
To the pure water from the creeks,

6. So I said to myself, rejoice with prose,
Since only prose is a true companion.

7. But it said, “Rather, my joy is in the folds
Upon the great chest full of gifts,

8. The heart of the supreme state, the emancipated one,
A right hand to the king and ranks.

9. Without him, despair would have come between me
And my rhymes from every side,

10. Without him, the winds would not have equaled
The sticks that eloquence made into firewood.

11. He is the sorrow that no disease of misfortunes
Could make difficult for him,

12. So thank him that he has healed me
With a gift whose merit no critic pierced,

13. And can the reviver of Syria’s darkness revive me
By reviving the rhymes with darkness?

14. If all people were like him,
I would never have found one of them disappointing.

15. Between mankind and jinn from him
Are tidings by which hopes are fulfilled,

16. And between the two Ahmads and Sobhi
Is the perfection they adorned from blame of a critic.

17. The pillars of a state whose glories
Were inscribed with the finest attributes,

18. The mention of his praises flowed
To the horizon of east and west,

19. Its fortune reaches the near and the far,
And foreigners and strangers praise it,

20. And when its gifts were renewed,
The winds of strange and wondrous things blew,

21. I prayed for it, and that is obligatory,
And composed: the lesson of rhymes has ended.”