1. Where is the reproach of friends whose hearts have turned to stone?
They killed my sleep by reviving estrangement.

2. My innermost being did not spend the night in tranquility.
Alas for a union that avoids intimacy and draws apart!

3. My innermost being did not spend the night in tranquility,
While it is fuel for the fire through separation.

4. He said, "How long will you continue to suffer injustice,
Until you arrive at a meadow where you see no flowers blooming?"

5. My hair turned white and black at the same time,
And witnesses attest to that.

6. Or do you hope to attain the wishes of the afflicted one?
I said, "Without water, wood would not leaf out."

7. He said, "You will not win white chickens;
Or do you see your speckled hens as black?"

8. I said, "On the day I hunt wishes,
I have a body that perfectly masters the taming of the wild beasts."

9. How often has the roughness of youth worn out his garment,
Only to have the down of adolescence return it to softness!

10. With a tale that enchants enchantment itself,
Which, were it repeated, he would wish to come back,

11. At which the birds alight from the air,
And the wild cows' halters slip from the herdsmen.

12. Juveniles courted him in the bosom of the wind that growled
To the companions between tent walls and loom weights.

13. In darkness whose edges enfolded them
Above a land of plateaus and sand dunes,

14. Where it was as though the moon were an angel among them
With the stars thronging around it like flowers.

15. As though meteors had bound
Their hands to the Pleiades with chains.

16. Truly, I said to the cheek of our Iesa,
While she is stingy toward stinginess in her generosity:

17. "Do openings that rend holes come to you from me,
Or have you gotten them from chewing your liver?

18. So when will the darkness lift from her eyes
The pillar of night at the gleam of dawn?

19. When I see what had blackened of the gloom of night
Melted away at the flames of the sun."

20. Revealing the ugly discoloration of an eye whose eyelash
Had been bent by the beauty of a radiant full moon.

21. More charming, if the eye of the sublime one grows hot,
Its kohl smudged by its glare with coolness.

22. In the portico of royalty, he is a king
Whose reign dates from ancient ʿĀd and Thamūd.

23. He stretched out his palm with streaming generosity,
But the tight‐fisted withdrew their palms from giving.

24. How many paths lead to him well‐traveled,
Yet to hunters they are like a mother to her child!

25. Possessing praiseworthy morals created
For valor, and peace from evil and perfection.

26. And clemency established in a nature
Like the flowers in a well‐watered meadow.

27. With honor protected, kindness given lavishly,
Steeped in the noble manners of his ancestors.

28. Firm in noble deeds, so how could night refuse
The dawn its favor?

29. Going forward, hunting the heroes of turmoil—
For the lion cub is a terrifying creature to the wild beasts.

30. Possessing skillful stratagems in still dignity
Like tinder for the burning coal's dormant fire.

31. His right hand has grown accustomed to the lions' beneficence,
And beneficence makes prosperous his right hand when he rules.

32. How many lawless nomads in the land emigrated from it,
With his hands exacting dues and tribute from them!

33. Of kings whom their eulogists have strung together
In the poor rhymes of poems like necklaces.

34. In houses built only so the man
Might live forever in their praise.

35. Every steady and wise ruler carrying his realm,
Just in conduct and faithful to his pacts.

36. A lion—though one might think his agent
A snarling wolf tearing bodies to pieces.

37. They were brought up amid plenty from their resolve
For noble deeds in breasts and souls.

38. A house of glory whose reputation
Exceeded the four directions' every limit.

39. It hurls armies with curled hair like stirring seas
At the battle, with spears bared and soldiers intrepid.

40. Whose iron flanks the blood's cascade has washed
From the stab wounds of lances piercing coats of mail.

41. With eagles that fill their entrails
On the corpses of Banū Hājiz like feasts laid out.

42. Crawling like the sea swelling with the rising wind
Amid the bitterness of death in the giants' shadow.

43. Its surge like the massing clouds, wrapping
Lightning bolts and rumbling thunderclaps.

44. And when its swords kneel
Over the skulls of the foe, they bow down kneeling.

45. For death, it has tongues
That scarcely rest within the mouths of despondent cowards.

46. Every angry man believes the onlooker sees in
Its midst flames with water as the fuel.

47. And attributes of white blended with red in it,
For the blood that dyes the coats of mail black.

48. Where the trace upon them seems an embroidered pattern
Nearly obscured by the deep blackness of their tint.

49. As though slaughter in them lives forever,
Instilling vitality in the enemies it lays low.

50. Grant us, O son of ʿAlī, a king
In glory, soaring high and climbing upward!

51. And draw us near to you by kissing the earth,
Each honored chieftain, though his cheek be blackened!