1. I despair when the encampments and lovely maidens depart,
For people in their days are but frail.

2. I seek refuge in God from a year, my brother, worse than last,
Its stars arising in smoke that sparks and smolders.

3. Its prosperity is pearls in honor,
Yet how can pearls be consumed in destitution?

4. Dewdrops on meadows wound the feet that tread them.
You forget the fantasies dreams and visions stirred.

5. Let your hand flow with bounty when you are able,
For death's sure path, I swear, sows only seeds.

6. Our ears came round to benefit:
They brought us nothing for which joy is famed.

7. The bliss of your world was incomplete for anyone.
Would that as a child your crib were never strewn.

8. It saddens you now to meet disquiet
Like sorrow, guarded in its sleep by bliss.

9. We shunned not water until after trying it—
We drank, yet still the heat remained unquenched.

10. The soft sands where the gazelle finds repose
Are better than a mattress richly furnished.

11. Solace of the eye is not in flowers
That disappear from tearful eyes' lament.

12. Among us envy is well known. Did she
Who trails behind envy the others' litters?

13. No friendship thrives with the carnal soul,
But enmity comes to you of its own accord.

14. You forbid and yet you are immersed
In what has plainly been revealed as fraud.

15. As for Uqayl, no mind restrains their tyranny—
Those hissing snakes in them have lost all track.

16. When night prevails over a tender sprig,
It withers, sucked by clinging cankerworms.

17. Evil in men is sown, and elsewhere too,
While benefit, since it began, with harm is mixed.

18. They resemble each other in odious, loathsome traits,
And the howls of beasts echo from their dens.

19. Contradiction lives in worldly men like their fate—
The watchful wakeful passes, and then drowsiness prevails.

20. By God, the pearly shine of youth once glided by,
As though its flowing tears could bring it back again.