1. My brother and my son, why is your heart distraught?
Your hearing is deaf, your gaze distracted, your tears flowing down your cheek hardened.

2. And the tears feared by the Almighty, what are they?
Don't you have the wisdom to guide your mind, obeyed and clear in its thoughts?

3. You are well-versed in the traditions and prohibitions,
In the Quranic texts, consensus - so how did you go astray?

4. Your youth has passed, oh regretful one, and the first signs of old age have come,
And these dark nights are misfortunes, and their events are calamities.

5. I see you boasting, unlike what you are.
Do you accept to be equal to them in deeds?

6. Boast like the masters of knowledge when you are one of them,
When the generous call you their peer, then boast.

7. You have the noble house as a sanctuary,
You, you are the ultimate scholar.

8. Obey me, obey your Master privately and openly,
To gain the merit of the best that remains while you live.

9. If knowledge is not born of wisdom and chastity,
It will end in humiliation and much disgrace.

10. There is no good in a life that came through hypocrisy
And malice returning, and changing faces.

11. You don't own anyone's soul but your own, so guide it
To the path of salvation after its tribulations.

12. Salvage the end of your life with repentance,
Before the final separation and sorrowful parting.

13. My advice to you, oh regretful one, is sincere,
And you are compliant to advice and wise.

14. I love you and God knows my love for you,
And God did not neglect or forget the boaster.

15. If I unveiled my inner secrets, you would be to me
Like Qais to the slave girl of Mina.

16. I advised you out of sincerity, and even if I am ignorant,
My advice would still be that of a sincere advisor.

17. My sermon awakens every heedless one, and even if I am not mindful,
I am the one heedless of heedlessness.

18. So long have I spent my life in vain, by God!
A prisoner of youthful folly, friend of frivolity.

19. If my ear hears passion it listens,
And wretched is the man who listens to his passion.

20. If my own sermon does not admonish me, advising one like me is folly,
What folly to advise one like me!

21. It is the soul that disobeyed me, and my heart obeyed it,
As my tongue obeyed my lips.

22. So you who seek the path of integrity, away from misery
And the path of misery is difficult and has no integrity,

23. My God and my worshipped one, your affection is mercy
And enable my efforts to please you, my God.

24. If my fear increases, fear increases my desire,
And if my remembrance of You increases, so does my fervor.

25. I accept the decree of fate and its judgment,
Over my discernment in my conduct and afflictions.