1. You say to me, while your eyelids are swollen,
"Who made clear in the darkness of night a spark?"

2. Who taught the hue of your cheeks its coloring,
And threaded your beauty wherever it wove or hid?

3. Why do I see you with the moonlight eclipsed
In your cheeks, though a line therein is erased?

4. You seem a quarter whose dweller is lost,
Or a house abandoned by its people and left to decay.

5. What harm in white hair, if its sight
Sates gazing eyes, wherever it might tarry or withhold?

6. Do you not know we are a folk quick to despair,
Who spurn the morn and pine for its eve?

7. So I said, no act have I done disobeying
My Lord, though my heart be on its guard and despairing.

8. Youth is but a garment doffed,
Exchanged for what makes you disdain its exchange.

9. Blame me for all you disdain of firmness!
What care I if white hair stays or goes?

10. Seek not frivolity from me now white hair
Has crowned my head! To sit in frivolity has grown stale.

11. Do not expect from me what you were accustomed to of sweet talk.
All that was pliant in my heart has grown stiff come morning.