1. These are not embers, but spears unsheathed,
And those are eggs, though called by other names,

2. They pierce each heart though still in sheaths encased,
How can a blade pass through if still unpierced?

3. The virgins thought me stubborn in their love,
A flaw of love is listening to reproach,

4. My heart has turned though my body comfortless,
It answers not the questioning of the lost.

5. Love loves estrangement and ceases not from fervor,
I stand while it moves on with the caravans,

6. My day is gloom when sunshine hides its face,
Eclipsed are the dawns with their haloed horizons.

7. The loving glances of the fair are but shadows, fleeting,
What shadow remains of one who does not tarry?

8. I long for India though blamed by the zealous,
Had I but spoken what her early days did!

9. She has gone leaving no heart save burning,
No eye save weeping and downcast.

10. When the gaze of each gazelle flashed with ornament
And the reproach of all reproachers was but flirtation.

11. Her undulations made us converse unintentionally
When the waist grew thin, the conversation extended,

12. Her silence has a purpose which binds it
While her scarf has a contradiction all consistent.

13. It provokes my bounty's zeal with its stinginess,
Yet never have I heard of zeal provoked by stinginess,

14. Tell the cheek of my beloved chiding her jestingly,
I rave with a stingy one, yet he is all generosity.

15. Dawn has a sign in the morn of her beauty,
To whom shall I reveal it if lips and kisses conceal it?

16. A garden of loveliness, if one could harvest it
It would bear what modesty itself has planted.

17. I made her my heart's prisoner against her wishes,
So her frowning eye there flashes angrily,

18. I fancy it is jealous of it for its love,
Imagining that kohl is put in it.

19. I bowed to passion in her as she bowed,
And yielded to the perfect Sovereign.

20. Time has turned back the past days returning,
A purpose short of which are stratagems and wiles.

21. Thus her past youth returned not,
Like the crescent moon without fullness or transition.

22. O Lord of the swords which, had they no worshippers,
I would say there is no refuge with them from fate.

23. Destinies, how many a heart have pictured them,
And by the planets, destinies are surely watered.

24. By it we attained the hopes that were distant,
Forgiveness, and the hitting of the mark of fancy and hope.

25. And he who battles with God's sword in his hand
Sublimely, there is neither prophet nor soothsayer he fears.

26. For him are positions from the sun of daylight, a sun
That rises and sets, its zeniths unknown to Saturn.

27. The brothers of kings when they are munificent,
Say not in the valleys that it is mere drizzle,

28. Ask of their actions on the day they ransomed and raged,
That the place and the parchment may inform the withered.

29. The beneficent show neither stinginess nor miserliness,
The detractors neither cowardice nor holding back.

30. They attained the heights with the red summits humbly bowed,
So let no people claim that they are bees.

31. Whether they fought and plundered or made peace and granted,
Or discoursed and decided or vied and excelled,

32. They forgave when wrathful and were just when judging,
Clement when determining and generous when asked.

33. Truly you brought the East's kings low and abject,
Their eyes dazzled by your kingship's declining suns.

34. When their kingdom's days grew old, they sought
A king in whose kingship was youthful sovereignty.

35. You cast them from stern resolve, embodied,
And your arrows never miss their mark.

36. A clear victory whose walls did not frown,
The catapults upon them sightless.

37. And thunder in its bosom like the croaking rain,
While your army's white in its sheaths is flaming.

38. You did not end the fray without its garb being blackened,
Save that it bent over, clothed with blood.

39. The eye of Syria bewailed you not
Save that its lid flowed with antimony lining.

40. You visited Egypt freely with neither guide nor companion,
The towering cities and hills hailed you,

41. You settled it when you secured the lands through it,
Conclusively, and the discord and babble were silenced.

42. Thus to the hearts that long were settled through it
Is repose, while for it in the world is glory.

43. Its day through you is consecrated night,
Each of them, and all the nights origin.

44. You stripped it of harm and clothed the age with it,
So today no fear or cessation is known.

45. Where clouds are lightning and the firm of purpose rain,
And for arrows in it a pouring trainer.

46. You did what pleased till none can parallel it,
And said what pleased so that it is proverbial.

47. The sea does not judge what its rider supposes,
Rather it is the small craft that rocks the frail.

48. It rests toward its brother when neighboring,
So the whole is united and the rope connected.

49. How can enemies endure one of wrathful deeds
Through their actions, while the noble by nature endure?

50. You came to rule the land and the excuses clear
To you, while nature is not a thing transitional.

51. If an inanimate being walked in joy,
The hills and mountains would walk toward you.

52. For it is a house you own,
And your prey in it, its prey freely.

53. None shall address its dweller save the Indian,
For the command of India's swords is fulfilled.

54. You have not determined a matter you undertake
Save victory therein being on the move.

55. So resolve the problem of the traitors' perfidy,
A sword's virtue being the curing of diseases.

56. Announce, for when you act people have no trench,
No she-camel there, neither camel nor foal.

57. As long as you remain, my state because of you
Is exalted, the raiment of favor flawless.

58. Let no youth despair though grand hopes fail,
For after God, your hands are clasped.