1. Do not approach mischief,
for mischiefs are disgraceful.

2. And make your righteousness eternal,
for the righteous are the everlasting.

3. In this world, to us
there are lessons forever.

4. Either favours coming,
or favours departing.

5. And the events of days amongst us
are taking and giving.

6. And humiliation is death for the youth,
and honour is life in this world.

7. And provision in both abodes is only
obedience or glorious traces.

8. O loss for the man misguided
by those inviting him to ruin.

9. They delude him until he becomes friendly
with their alluring slopes.

10. Lessons pass but to them
we have no discerning eyes.

11. Where are those forebears, with what
hands they acquired, then died?

12. Of all who reaped
the fruits of Tigris and Euphrates,

13. it is said they attained what they craved
until it was said they passed away.

14. Their bath-attendants did not avail them
when the (angel of) death came to them.

15. Nay! Neither white nor red,
bare, wide open.

16. They spoke for a while, but for their speech
there remains nothing but silence.

17. As if by their graves
they slept, but in them there is no sleep.

18. After mounting couches
and rolling on mattresses, they are motes.

19. They bid farewell to the virtuous women
and gazelles when they perished.

20. And escaped from the haze when
it was said they had no deliverance.

21. In a stance in which are
horror, perplexity, and agonies.

22. And their days from where
they feared not their appointed time.

23. And the earth covered them
with gloomy graves.

24. So they are in them like feeble ones
ravaged by storms.

25. Dishevelled, their pillows therein
without hospitality, bare.

26. Say to those whose inclinations to
this world are attentive.

27. As if they never heard
what the wailers say.

28. Or what the abodes say to them
when they inhabit the desolate dwellings.

29. So the laughing ones, who rejoiced with them,
are the crying ones.

30. Until when and until when
do your eyes sleep O seniors?

31. How much longer will you deviate
from the eternal admonitions?

32. How much have you been admonished, if only
you had compliant hearts!

33. You have averse minds,
or heedless eyes.

34. Wonder at the abodes, and call upon them:
where are the firm mountains?

35. Where are the generous ones
to the slender waisted and the abstainers?

36. Death runs in their veins altogether
while prayers run.

37. And if they met, on the day of calamity,
their peers, it would be solace.

38. And time is subdued by their right hand
while they rule the world.

39. It gave them generously
then took back saying: hand them over!

40. They were all together, then
He dispersed their unity into fragments.

41. So their hands after being granted bounties
became destitute and withered.

42. And their swords and spears
were discarded and rusted.

43. They felt secure in the morn, and they had
no knowledge of what death reaps.

44. And He afflicted them
with a disease which healers cannot cure.

45. And the arrows of the Bender's
accurate, poisoning arrows.

46. The dew disappeared from between us
with their deaths, and the bounties.