1. Your friendship is, O most noble of hopes,
A treasure that makes me needless of all mankind,

2. And of a homeland yearned for in longing
As the lovelorn orphan yearns in passion keen.

3. A quarter in Damascus' land, watered
By God with the rains of clouds streaming,

4. Vying with Aldebaran's radiance in fortune,
And rising gracefully, abode of peace.

5. How, when you have sent me verses
That match pearls in the strand of prosody,

6. And prose no prosaist can match
If he contends with it in the verse of speech?

7. Not the Pleiades in their array
Or the luminous shooting stars in the dark,

8. Or the verdant meadow, green its robe,
Wrought by the hands of the winds, grasper of plants,

9. Has adorned its boughs with a blossoming cherry
Whose lament answers the warble of the dove,

10. With better elegance than it and sweeter
To the heart of the ardent lover.

11. So thrive among the loyal, O you of bounty
Drawing with it the trains of glorious repute.

12. Your side is a qiblah, your protection a cornerstone,
And your door a Kaaba, wherein is my station.

13. As long as the days continue I shall yearn
For a youth in Rum who pines for Damascus.