1. No blame lies on the lover who complains of passion;
If he makes known his ardour, who suffers torment complains.

2. Bewildered I became through fear of my belovèd;
I made my tears to flow in the bed of my streaming robe.

3. She appears like the full moon and sways like a branchlet;
Yet, if she favours, ‘tis like musk exhaling perfume.

4. Today she is niggardly of my union, though erewhile
She spent the night awake to the tale of my yearning.

5. Love made me drunk with her eyelids’ sorcery,
While you, my censurer, are vexed with love’s ardour.

6. The easiest thing in loving her is that she
Has tender limbs that harbour wounds in every heart.

7. She kills them unsuspecting—far from her
To kill one undeserving of such wrong!

8. My drunkenness knows not sobriety or wine;
In us it is diseased, in her but mirth and jest.

9. My shamefacedness delights in union with her;
Well done my shamefacedness in loving her!

10. I complain to the night of my bed, but it
Has slept from listening to me and dawn gleams.

11. O my heart, where is your patience with her beauty?
And you, my eyelid, where is the dawn?

12. Ah, turtle-dove of the sandhill, you are she
Whose love makes me sad; then you sang and plained.

13. The tears have emboldened you, and longing for her
Has wasted me, so grant me your wing’s protection!

14. Your love for the branches and mine for her amount to this:
I swore the forbidden is like the permissible.

15. The valley of ardour and love-desire attracts me;
What encampments has it harboured, pierced with spears!

16. Her estrangement has a wonted practice,
Such are the traits of every gently nurtured gazelle.

17. How excellent is the black-eyed gazelle possessed by that tribe,
Sweet her throat, jesting and graceful her gait!

18. She sang a Lahn of swooning and I inhaled
The fragrance of the budding branches of the ban.

19. Each day a lover is slain after refusal
Or fever, then gains his desire and takes it by force.

20. Say to her who asks the people of passion about me
In wonderment: “Do not ask, seeking to please!”

21. Wonderful that I have lived after them!
Had one like you died of love, he would have found rest.

22. But I was kept alive by the favour of the noble one
Of gentle birth, well-bred, endowed with clemency.

23. Lord of wishes, fertile, beautiful,
And of the sweet, pure Euphrates, brigand of souls.

24. Had the sea of his munificence not flowed to mankind,
It would have journeyed to seek them, wandering about.

25. O best of men in dwelling, and most chaste in character,
Pleasantest in jest of all the deadly serious!

26. I would establish, if you were pleased, gardens of contentment
Which, if the wind of fear blew on, would be laid waste.

27. Exultant in praise of the giver of his morning draught,
Which takes from his love what the dawn takes from joy.

28. He seizes thereby from the Exalted
What the dawn takes from delight and pleasance.

29. And every jealous one in his abode
Exulted in him, then assaulted the red camels.

30. His rest has accustomed restfulness to dwell with well-being,
And in war, the clashing of arms with arms.

31. If war’s lightning flashed around their abodes,
They said to the lance-bearers: “Do not go away!”

32. They exchanged the wealth of their enemies
For that they should have either a wine-flask or cups.

33. You may take at will from the gazelles that pasture
At the spring of modesty, lion and insolent.

34. Choice in countenance and nose,
In soul flowers of joy and comfort.

35. How often he brought bliss to an assembly whose portion
Was misery, and sprinkled with bounty the wing of success!

36. And saved many a man of the age from the
Injustice, after grievous wrong, with patent equity.

37. He bestows generously, like rain, upon grief
From our woes—such as is the portion of outcasts.

38. O you whose favour has healed my sickness of estrangement
And it had multiplied wounds within me!

39. My fortune opposed me—and who is it
That fate casts down despite his will?

40. The days, your servants, have warred
Against my endurance, and I have cast away my arms.

41. Poetry protected me when the noble steeds
Failed me—God forbid the boats should fail!

42. Had it not been for you, I would not have attributed
Lineage to past time or praise to the present.

43. Whatever you have decided to afflict me with,
Apart from separation from you and avoidance.

44. Do not cast me off, I have a reason
For which my past flow of youth refuses disgrace.

45. So may the wings of my hopes, like the face of dawn,
Gleam, since the mother of well-being shone in your circle!

46. Your doors are closed to me, yet to
The world they have opened wide.

47. How many noble and how many suppliant
For inviolable honour and lawful portion!

48. You have beautified by your goodness the faces
Of the noble, and before your beautifying they were ugly.

49. So, O son of hopes, I am a man
Who has curbed the greed of close-fisted hands.

50. I have struggled with contentment by night, and contentment,
Though the going is hard, spurns being carried.

51. Loss of me made an abject man mighty,
When I had been harsh and ungentle toward them.

52. How many a wise man has time blotted out,
As though dispatching him with erasure!

53. The nights have spoken of him—but
The nights’ discourses are veridical.

54. Dumb, but verily their deeds
In respect of them are eloquent.

55. Would that he who has no favour
Should reciprocate, not complain!

56. So be as a heart to a heart whose patience
Was lost when every sorrow came to it by turns.

57. And listen to aperc ̧u of a love-sick, heart-stricken one,
Purer than the full moons, or than white tumblers!

58. Let him be choked who is choked
By listening, as though you made him drink lees.

59. And say to him who has tried to censure me: “Does the
Roaring of lions resemble the barking of curs?”