1. What did the night of introduction reap,
That it stirred a heart not stirred by love before?

2. Had I known what burdens it would load on me
When halting, I'd have been wary on the day I halted.

3. Until love settled in our hearts,
With its beauty, the shy gazelles.

4. It showed you unveiled beauty after
Shedding the decorum of pilgrimage garb.

5. I'd have been content with her greeting, had it
Quenched the agony or slaked the thirst of the fervid.

6. Love contents itself with little for people
Who before it wouldn't content themselves with little.

7. It makes slow to love seem as though
He had never been other than swift.

8. Oh, her love, go easy on a heart which
You made know what was unknown before.

9. It would have been content, had you not been harsh,
To be the arbiter within its core.

10. You cast off, O slim one, on the day of farewell,
All your burden upon my weak nape.

11. Every loved one leads him to love
And every intimate terrifies him with separation.

12. It's as though, when I returned to the dwellings,
I returned, my eyes weeping, blinded.

13. With a sigh which the chaste attested
Came from one heavily burdened by passion.

14. Whenever I denied love dissemblingly,
They exposed it through my spilled tears.

15. On our wishes stumbling blocks were set
By love, with stacks, before the pebbles.

16. They trail the skirts of gowns coquettishly
With beauty, every beauty trailing its skirt.

17. They turned from wearing snoods, though the snood
Is an adornment for the beauties of snooded ones.

18. She expressed wonder at greying hair though it's
An allurement for a coquette and lover’s wooing.

19. The beautiful one burdened me with her attachments
As though her captivation was my captivation.

20. It is an abode I substituted for another,
Yet it is riches in the familiar abode.

21. Do not deny it, for it is farther
From the conjectures of a conjecturer.

22. Remote in regions, erasing traces,
From the circling winds’ long circling.

23. In it no voice of a companion, only
For the rose gardens, the sound of the ringing bell.

24. It is as though the ostrich’s throats in its expanse
Are a flock scattered by a soft repeller.

25. It cut short my heels though it wasn't galloping
Despite my long stride and gait’s fluctuation.

26. I seek what all mankind seeks to attain
Among the debarred and the attained.

27. Glory in all men, but no glory
Is got without fatigue and obligation.

28. Barrenness is the shelter of the glorious,
While abasement is the home of the lowly.

29. Misfortunes have recognized my ascent
And fate lavished on me its upturning.

30. I took refuge from the abjection of people
Reproaching none, and none reproaching me.

31. So my dwelling is in the circle of the noble,
And my square and summering place are in virtues.

32. The star’s course, rising lofty in the sky,
Flowed with my verse and compositions.

33. Of time’s betrayal of its people, I saw,
After they felt safe from it, every twist.

34. I wondered that the strong avoid wealth
So long, and the step of the lame, bent over.

35. Men are blind to the right, as though
They are blind to what is not hidden.

36. I ransomed my honor from the insults of my tribe
With my aloofness from evil and my loftiness.

37. In proportion to my guarding them from what pained them,
I gave them of my benignity and nobility.

38. How the enemies cowered before meeting them
By the lightning of my threats and thunder of my power.

39. They are a people who held the world’s reins
With the thrusts of spears and the blows of swords.

40. And stands on each great day
Where none but they could take a stand.

41. And sights which filled their enemies’ hordes
With motes in the eyes and bendings of the nose.

42. They made great bounties permissible and showered
On the shadowed the known kindnesses.

43. On the day of battle they were serpents
In the folds, or black lions.

44. How many riders of them on galloping saddlecloths -
Exulting in generosity or demeaning avarice!

45. Honored with bounties, and many a time
The dew was familiar with the unfamiliar.

46. I frequented the councils of kings, responding
With my voice, and listening to my guidance.

47. I protected them with resolve from every harm
And sufficed them with determination against every terror.

48. You see them studying my virtues
And classifying the pristine of my qualities.

49. They repeat to the narrators my exploits
And enumerate my thousands of horsemen.

50. They march against their enemy’s lands
With the most courageous armies of men’s judgment.

51. When they see a strange, sudden stranger,
They are startled in their estrangement to my description.

52. They averted from themselves the great misfortunes through me
And sought refuge from the harm of enemies in my burrows.

53. I kept company with them all, every man of valor
Sublime on the summits of glorious deeds.

54. Gaze toward him as you stand facing him
Among thousands, with searching eyes.

55. Say now to the envious rivals: Withdraw
From a peerless sun of unblemished rising!

56. Leave the course of the two rivers be,
For the torrent sweeps away every mound.

57. And equip yourselves with the despair of hearts from
For Minifa is the house of every well-settled one.

58. Be content to walk when you have no magnanimity
As guests in the house of my glorious hospitality.