1. Your destiny baffles minds,
Thus praises fall short to describe it.

2. Those who tried to detail your loftiness,
Could not convey it fully to people.

3. You set your resolve between the eyes of adversity,
And your spirit overwhelmed all that quivered.

4. You journeyed in the darkness of night gallantly,
As if it were a night lit by your moon-like face.

5. If you return, though return be your intent,
The sea swells and ebbs with your enormity.

6. Victory comes from God’s grace on His day,
Brought forward or delayed as He desires.

7. Had the time not drawn near its ordained hour,
Khyber would not have opened for Ahmad thus.

8. And cavaliers whose hands make green iron red
When they strike, no trace of fear in them.

9. As if fused by the fires of war and emboldened,
Some meek, others bold, some swords feminine, others masculine.

10. Their hearts have grown accustomed to submitting to their Lord,
And glory resides in their ever-victorious swords.

11. They hurl their souls at certain death undaunted,
Their faces mocking the eyes that see them.

12. Brooks gush forth from their sheathed swords
To irrigate the thickets of their foes.

13. Each brute-natured as a slumbering lion
Between the staffs of spears.

14. Foremost in patience, his veil on the day of battle
His breastplate and forgiveness.

15. Their armies, O what armies accompanied them!
As if oceans burst forth over oceans.

16. Woe to the fortress of Labeet on a day
When the red torrent flows by its sides!

17. Fear weighs down its hours but lightens
With the heroes in it, the cowards.

18. The day folds back on itself therein
As if the sun coils and turns in on itself.

19. The gloom therein is endless night without morn,
And dawn but borrowed flashes that cannot spread.

20. Indeed you tightened the noose around their heights’ necks,
As one who sees clearly turned his judgment on them.

21. They sought refuge in the heights, as if it were
An impregnable refuge reinforced with leaden walls.

22. You diminished their numbers, yet it was as if
Time let them be there only to increase.

23. Scarcely would their ashes remain when
A hissing wind scatters them in the air.

24. The guide rose, no liar he, and said
The Christians are forsaken and you supported.

25. You stilled the tremors in the horizons caused by them,
And the pulse of being was calmed and slowed.

26. Why did blasphemy not restrain its course
When you shattered its firm pillars?

27. A day of glory and honor, while the knights
Stumble over the heights, falling and failing.

28. Eyes downcast, hearts brimmed with sorrows,
A painful day for the chivalrous knight.

29. He mounted the steed of error, insisting on his wrong opinion,
An ignorant soul crossing where none may cross.

30. In your resolves which you executed upon them
Take a lesson that does not change with days.

31. The horses are saddled in the dark around you
On each a tooth-like spear glistens.

32. Chewing the rations after losing their fodder,
Their mouths controlled by the snaffle.

33. The ground tore beneath their hooves
As the boulders of the land yielded to their trampling.

34. As your hunting dogs sing to protect them from harm
Melodies and serve them brimming cups.

35. You strove in God as His striving warrants,
While kings raced as you raced and fell short.

36. So teak and sissoo are around them at night,
While lions and leopards are around you.

37. The pungent smell of them and their tickling
Are bloodstains on your mantle and braids.

38. A garden thirsted for the spring rain of your praise
Yet rarely can it be watered to satiety.

39. I know your height encompasses all,
Your hand is generous, your munificence abundant.