1. With camels whose beauty the parting has marred, ruining their graceful swaying gaits,
And shaking the slender waists of the spears amidst the clashes of their quivers,

2. No sooner did the wind of parting blow, bearing their ships against the enemy host,
Than the courage of the drowsy, made sluggish by prolonged drinking, was roused, their slumbering ferocity awakened from its lair,

3. Their red banners seem as though the eyelids of the spears have been painted with collyrium by their dusky points,
Tossing about their eyelashes as though the deadly strokes of their blades had encountered each other at the time of the encounter,

4. They said, "Stop, that you may hear the voices of their 'Isa in the pressing present, and in the near future,"
So we stopped, confessing our passion for the slain even as we read in their glances the message of their glance,

5. While our minds scattered amidst the lowing camels, watch a flock that has lost its shepherd in the folds,
The companion of love in its seclusion finds the solitude harrowing, so the noblest of lions are helpless without their cubs,

6. The mirage disappointed the red camels, so many a diver plunged in never to reach the shore,
What can avail the slain man in death now that access to him is denied?

7. At the halt of parting - painful body-wrenching - to bid farewell to one emaciated and pallid
Who had before the separation complained of the tattling of slanderers and the rebuke of reproachers;

8. On the kerchief of the beautiful one is a counter-spell to ward off the evil of magic and the guile of Babylon,
Had Harut and Marut but glimpsed her face, they would have become only two shirts to cover her charms;

9. Without struggle she gathered the ripe fruits of our hearts, and with her soft fingers plucked those fruits in their ripeness;
I think the leanness that clothed her waist made lean with love what is within her bracelets;

10. Far from love he folded what that star of salvation folded, so who will aid a heart entangled in her tresses?
Lavishly they gave us from their lutes, the laughter of the singing girls at the inertness of aged spinsters,

11. When passion stirred within them, we saw in them the bounty of Ibn 'Abbad and the ease of one who hopes for favor;
A pillar whose glory makes the land surge around him when he lifts his banners above the squadrons,

12. Death overturned therein the eyes of the forsaken in the twinkling of an eye amidst the clashes of its proboscises;
At the mention of him the eyes of mankind squint to see the full moon in its mansions,

13. For he was a refuge for us when fate dealt roughly, by the truth of an upright father, guardian of the upright state,
Who defends the rightly guided from the wrongdoing of the misguided and their supporters;

14. A brother to resolute men, an emigrant from hunger when the eye of the lofty turns from their hopes,
Gentle of mind, dogged of purpose, glorious, as though his traits were mingled in the lineaments traced by the jeweled stylus,

15. Fierce in the thick of battle, tearing up the enemy ranks when they try the mettle of his warriors,
In the fury of battle a lion as though clad in the softness of an enfolding gown,

16. The notches of his sword glisten amidst the stars, and the head of his lance gores in the breasts,
Abiding in the land of dread, whose heavens rain down upon him spears from the clouds of its catapults,

17. As though the abode of war were more pleasant to him than the plains of India or the nearer tribes,
The leaves of the gilded books are stained with every blood whose plants have drunk the dropping rain,

18. Plumes on him for the vultures, with glints like lightning flashes in their joints,
You would think him a sea with billows swelling, its soul in its first waves, its corpses in its last,

19. Shadowed by a dense flock of birds tearing away the souls of the foe in their talons;
When resolve precipitates in him a drop, its heights in destruction beneath its depths,

20. To you we moored the ships, in every storm our guideposts lost in the wastes;
Repelling terrors is up to the stronghold to which troubles flow whether he draws up its attributes or sends them forth;

21. To a king whose sword and deeds are hell to his adversary and paradise to his aspirant,
Marvel of the signs of munificence, companion to the rhythm of gracious deeds, like them in his liberality,

22. Generous, when the winds of joy blow, the ships of hope sail the sea of his asking;
We have lifted up the chant of ode and verse in his praise, rapturing the ears of the sublime in their assemblies;

23. Ask me of him and hear the truth, for I discourse concerning his resolves and virtues,
And ask me not about the obligatory duties of his stature when a portion of his supererogations floods the world;

24. The most generous of the waters of heaven is Muhammad - does the known generosity of heaven ever fail?