1. The waters of youth, how they withered,
And gardens of childhood dried as if scorched.

2. The hopes of souls are excuses,
Yet events confront them.

3. Neither do days spare harm,
Nor do the determined spare life's comfort.

4. The causes of death are fragile as hair,
Curtailed by your Lord's knowledge or pinched off.

5. The gazelles are not fleeing me in fear,
Returning to the pastures or nestling there.

6. So take not the entrusted possessions of the feathered,
For what stinginess, O man, can avail you?

7. Revere God and refrain from caprices,
That they may preen and take their ease.

8. They tread the wonted course and plunge into the sea of bliss,
Wallowing in gold that they amass.

9. For the singers in the trees a defect it is
If their informer says they have a nest.

10. The elegies of Imru' al-Qays bin Hujr
And the brother of idleness when it stirred him.

11. The steeds of frivolity bolting with us
Unseat their riders if they are spurred.

12. Better the bashfulness of the youths
Than glances that seduce the chaste.

13. Disburse your alms ungrudgingly,
For all your wealth will be dispersed willy-nilly.

14. The most helpless people of this land are those
Who cannot manage the five prayers enjoined.

15. Fast the Ramadan willingly and obediently
When feet are burnt by the heat.

16. The eyes of the two worlds are in gloom,
Though not a planet has gone into eclipse.

17. What remains of the tidings gladdens the intimates
Who hurried to reap and glean them.

18. I see the times as repositories for remembrance
When it flows in abundance and they store it away.

19. Only histories remain for the realms of Kisra
While theirs will also vanish and be erased.

20. Take wing if you are a day a winged creature
For the goshawk of fate will swoop down and catch you.

21. How many birds are confined for no sin
And imprisoned in cages from which they cannot escape!

22. When the pilgrimage is difficult for God
Its ways are strait for him even if smoothed.

23. He who rises in the morning with a sound mind
To correct aberrant behavior lies when it sickens.

24. They are phantoms, like names, ordained
By fate to be raised or cast down.

25. Those are the clouds of the world which
Addle the wise man if they outlast him.

26. The arguments of speech have become like the plain of Ghadir,
Imminent they break out and flare up.

27. Maybe the souls withdrawn from innocence
Were disturbed by what they were denied.

28. Things have causes even if
Misfortunes were not cast at bodies.

29. Waters surged and flowed
In sequence over eras they cascaded.