1. Why do you still desire me, seducer of hearts,
When grey hair is a guest that has settled in my forelock?

2. Do you not see it descending into my temples,
After which I have no more joy in trysts?

3. Erase my passion for singing girls, whose dye
Has permeated me, and uproot the seeds of desire from my ribs,

4. A gleam from it has shone in my head
Pointing to the days of my demise.

5. My youth was a means to revelry,
Then it vanished when means vanished.

6. O you who blame me wrongfully for what you have become accustomed to,
Take my hand away from fruitless wishing.

7. Do not reproach me for love after it
Since the grey hair of my head has sufficed as my censor.

8. And say to a people who taunted us as misguided,
Where are the little pebbles from the torrents?

9. And where are your bodies, despicable,
Compared to the tall, stately men?

10. We are the loftiest of mankind while you
Are the lowest of the low.

11. The virtues of masters are not equal
To the vices of slaves.

12. There is none among you except an ignoble idler,
While none of us is devoid of merit.

13. Leave ostentation to its rightful people,
And marry yourselves to the lowest abodes.

14. Do not swerve with a raging passion,
And do not settle in the path of torrents.

15. Do you not see my tribe is the best of people,
Then my clan is the finest of clans?

16. There is none among them, if weighed, that is deficient,
Nor any among them who is inexperienced in a gathering.

17. I swear by the House around which
Pilgrims circle, performing the rites devoutly.

18. By what they poured in the valley of Mina
At pebbles near the water-skin carriers.

19. By arms that cast when the rising of the sun
Was close, with tent-pegs.

20. By the two positions that everyone who carries sins
Wiped off his back between them.

21. If a people went astray in anything but them,
No one who hoped went astray at them.

22. From Quraysh, some youths have slept who
Are not like those you have claimed to possess virtues.

23. Pure ones, in lineage and piety,
Apart from death, the elite of watering places.

24. A people, if unknown in a battle,
They point out pedigrees by the markings.

25. For they are the lions of mankind on the day of clamor,
But they are the gentlest at gatherings.

26. If they contend, none contends like them,
Or if they dispute, none disputes like them.

27. Ask about them, if you do not recognize them,
Everyone tried and roads were explored.

28. And every outcast on the face of the earth
Whose ankle-rings you hear rattling.

29. As if their hands wield Indian swords
Sporting on a day of fright with blades.

30. From every fully-armed towering warrior
Whose spear is too short for the tallest spearmen.

31. It does not harm me – and shame does not diminish me –
That I do not possess easily-led swaying power,

32. And that I do not have silent and vocal might,
Or pride myself with a fasting she-camel and a stallion.

33. To spend it, if you wish, in the ways of favor
Is better than hoarded wealth.

34. Gratitude from one whose poverty you relieve
Is better, if you obtain it, than from a seeker.

35. So do not expose yourself to the vituperation of blamers and fabrications.
For there is none among us who welcomes like a deterrer,

36. Nor any of us who is open-handed like a withholder.
Wealth is nothing but ropes of delusion,

37. So escape, if you wish, from entanglements.
How long shall I bear the burdens of the world

38. That the back of a hardy young man cannot endure?
If care does not afflict me in the morning, it comes to me,

39. And I do not give it lodging during supplications.
And how many positions of abject lowliness,

40. And habitation far from the heights!
How often I remain confused from harm,

41. Justifying my lifetime with falsehoods!
As if, though I am complete without them,

42. I am content with half, being incomplete.
My outward appearance is envied and precise

43. But my interior is pitied and neglected,
As if I am a people from whom its rain was withheld,

44. Or an abode whose inhabitants have departed.
So say to my enviers: Awaken! Truly, that

45. In me which angers you is not concealed.
I am the one who loudly proclaimed elevated discourse –

46. My audacity and loftiness in debates.
If you build fortresses against the enemy,

47. I have fortresses in the shade of spear-shafts.
Do not conceal the superiority that I was granted,

48. For the sun is not veiled by barriers.
You have fled from my control for all time,

49. Like the flight of mice from snarling hounds.
Your eyes will never taste the fruit of spite

50. While in and around you are my calamities.
Fear corruption and beware the evil of one

51. Whose fires blazed so my stirring-sticks ignited.
The torrent of my violence complained

52. And the edges of your hearing whined.
If I do not make you into bands taken

53. By the onslaught of hurricanes and twisters,
Then I do not answer a call however loud the cry,

54. Nor on any day of munificence serve my questioners,
Nor do all my tribe, all of them, alight

55. For war-spoils or a day bound with fetters on my account,
And tomorrow you will see them attacking

56. On hill-tops like ostriches running wildly,
Coming out of every narrow pass like darkness,

57. In the forenoon like dawn with flowing torrents.
Who will pledge, who is this that closed

58. The watering-places with clustered favors,
And above them all, every one of awesome and majestic bearing

59. Watering the blades from the blood of the slain,
White like a sword but its blade

60. Was not polished by the hands of a polisher.
Where you see death picking out

61. The heavily laden camels and the humble,
And choking dust blinds the eyes from their sockets

62. And the earthquake makes the earth tremble,
The banners wavered and the stomach of every laden female

63. Miscarried before full term without exception,
And the anxiety of the young man for himself was no barrier

64. And the living forgot family ties,
If I do not attain my goals in Babylon

65. Then I have, if I wish, other than Babylon.
And if a land tosses me about,

66. I replace it with the most smooth-sloped.
And if one town squeezes me

67. My haunts do not run out in other towns.
And if a friend shuns and deserts me,

68. I shake off my love for him from my fingers.
Better than fertile land with humiliation

69. Is a lofty place however desolate.
Leave ostentation to those worthy of it