1. In my heart is the dwelling place of the shy gazelle,
So greet the aloofness that is intimate.

2. The morning breeze waved its shoulder on the day of Suwayqah,
The morning breeze waved the shoulder of the bending spear.

3. I grieve for a heart that has no escape,
In it are tears that have no detainer.

4. So beware the spark and crime of passion,
For with a glance it clings to the heart of the perceiver.

5. And I am enchanted by the rose of her shyness from a garden,
And I admire the narcissus of her glance from a keeper.

6. She was violent with weeping for your love to a laugher,
And to one asleep, the complete night-watcher.

7. He cast off his tresses and exceeded his cover,
So I wandered in a morn and a dark night.

8. With a rising for which glory to the splitter of its dawn!
And robes that have rolled up the right of the planter.

9. By his ardent love she has not been permitted
After resolve, from yellowness and suspicions.

10. How many times has the darkness been my supporter
In it, while the mouth of dawn against me a rival!

11. He cast it down, victorious, with the ignorance of a coveter,
And I return vanquished with the humiliation of a despairer.

12. The ghosts of it passed through the quarters of my heart,
So it wept over the bedouin quarter of the cultivated area.

13. And I refuse passion—if I possessed power
I would mutilate the nose of the sneezing morn.

14. So I broke the branch of the hand without a watcher,
And I kissed the rose of the cheek without a toucher.

15. And I had wandered into the lofty ones in some youths
Created for folding up the heels and saddling.

16. They went and the sky is not harmed by rising clouds,
Fearfully, nor the desolate place by a weeper.

17. Would that I had made my way through the regions of the country
Until I found the morn between protective walls.

18. Where there is no face of time smiling openly
Nor face of the dear one frowning.