1. Love is but the abode of the fanciful
And the skill of the ardent lover and the patience of the enamoured

2. A deception when souls are kindled by its fire
Nothing remains in them of the restraint of the enraptured

3. Return to passion with patience, for it is
The prolonging of yearning and the honour of the humble

4. By God, a heart in which love settles not
Except it becomes disturbed, enduring patiently

5. Think not my affection is for the first suitor
Obedient to the eyes and the haste of the impatient

6. For long have I turned away from the face of passion
And avoided the quarter of loves, unyielding

7. Now that old age has dyed my locks
Apparent to beholders, unravel not when you spin

8. And removed from the danger of old age my disquiet
My knowledge that youth is not my refuge

9. If I despair, all is cause for my despair
If I feel safe, it is the trait of the heedless

10. It suffices the youth a time whose change
Brings him between every stay and travel

11. Informing prudence if good fortune does not favour him
The gain of the steadfast and loss of the venturesome

12. The effort of the learned like the pardon of another ignorant
And success for the active seeker and the asker

13. Until my spirit becomes intimate with events
And time renders suspicious the thoughts of the contemplator

14. I confront the days with the severity of a resolute one
Baring difficulties, concealing death

15. And when I overpowered time with might
In God, the Commander of the Faithful, is my trust

16. With caprice the nation strayed in its ways
Chaos upon the exemplar of the Prophet, the Messenger

17. He assumed the Caliphate while it was most remote
And resided in it while it was a most noble abode

18. The implements of glory were completed through him though perhaps
The leadership of Mehdj was not complete

19. A demeanour gleaming to the eyes and along
Whose roads it gently flows to the humble

20. Of two contrasting tastes—to the chaste a delicacy
And for the wicked the bitterness of colocynth

21. Bounty that assumed amidst the shadows of severity
Like water that grazes in the napes of the slain

22. And if he hastened in the start of his resolve
He would disgrace thereby the composure of the hesitant

23. Decisive as the edge of a sword but for him
Boldness was not bent by the force of a joint

24. If worries did not thwart his worries like a torrent
That links a saddened one to the drained

25. And they entrusted to him the fullness of affairs though truly
They entrusted magnanimity to the sublime turban

26. They sought haven in the rent of his right hand whose radiance
Suffices the destitute the plea of the beseeching

27. So if they were glad, his ascending star shone
And if they knocked, his spring was more sweet

28. Passionate in warding off from the sanctum of their religion
Warding of the lion from the lair which it shades

29. Hastening to the seekers in earnest
Firmly grounded at the most solemn station

30. And if you asked and did not transgress or betray
And if you demanded, you took what you did not request

31. Suspicions come not to any discerning soul
Regarding the benefaction he did not do

32. And if worries crowded his breast
He dispelled their gloom with the resolve of stalwarts

33. Restless of insight if his thoughts roamed
And found what is beyond the lowered decree

34. Sublime of frame in virtues—the Caliphate settled in him
From it in a pillar firmly set

35. How the men disputed it but it did not stir
Except over the most honourable and tallest house

36. It responded to your call though how many a caller
Its shrieking did not permit the kissing

37. It inclined toward the fertile protection so it tossed about
In the shreds of patches for long

38. It did not bandage with your palms until it saw
You crumbling its heads, O resolutes

39. He ransoms you whom your glory imbued
The dawns with the barren lands and arid tracts

40. Sated by the copious bestowal of your clouds, the arid land
Followed in your glad tidings, exultant

41. And you have tested it against time and so they found
Wrath needless of the burnishing by the file

42. May God not distance your supplication from the enemies
A troop that you scatter in a scattered troop

43. Blazing in my confusion in the darkness of that night
Bristling in the narrowness of that pass

44. For no daring of courage except one defeated
Perplexed, groping in perplexity with meditation

45. And how many thrust you made at a withdrawing brother that shook him
The evilest of the hardy with a resolve like piercing

46. Do not consider sufficient his twisting strikes and so be content
Except that its gloom is the bedmate of the lizard

47. O braceleted of forearms, is there an extent
That you have not reached or an excellence that you did not excel?

48. Do not embarrass him with ingratitude and so take
From his wrath the bridle of an intricate matter

49. Your possessor of pliant disposition while you were
Settled between hesitation and disturbance

50. Your abasement of patience has deluded you and beneath it
There is vengeance that makes upright the deviant

51. Nothing deluded you but the overlooking of a vigilant one
Attentive in resolves, friendly in blades

52. If he forgives, he does not avenge or he avenges, he does not wrong
Or he wrongs, he does not brutalize

53. Vacate the way for the sun of every gloomy one
That gathered and illuminator of every obscure affair

54. O guardian of Islam—he who desires it
And establishes the rulings of the Book, the descent

55. The utmost of my desire is to see you and it is
An aspiration—it suffices the hopeful

56. Needs cascade upon reaching it from every heart
Entrusted to the Most High

57. Is there for me a glance toward the veiled face
That casts my voice above the ridge of the windswept hill?

58. I drive away therewith the rust of doubts when it befalls me
And I make its shadow reside in the sittings

59. I bestow praise—and this praise is not for one who strives
For that I distance myself from the words of the invalidator

60. Not the stain of stain repentance for it is
Defilement to the garb of one self-excused and ennobled

61. Alas! Praise cannot reach you but rather the outstanding
Attains the grace of the invested struggler

62. You favoured me ahead in my family all together
So when can my words carry the burden of your due?

63. And you stretched from my father's flank and left him
Belittled in the position of the powerless weakling

64. The heights of enemies trod upon him though they are
Heights enabled for the fall of feet

65. When rebellion flared in their nostrils
And they deviated from the ways of the exemplar

66. You rained upon them an abundance of might that returned them
Circulating the eloquence of the dishevelled

67. If they crept with an excuse thereafter
They rode by their sin the small camels of howdahs

68. You continue to rouse the ages as judge
In adversities, of steep refuge the stronghold