1. O messenger, inform Bishr bin Jama'a
Of advice from one who still advises for God

2. Follow the paths of the successful and their striving
Perhaps in your abode you may attain success

3. Leave your worldly occupation for another occupation
For your occupation with the next is more sublime and profitable

4. If you seek righteousness in this world hastily
Then gathering for the next is the most righteous

5. The delight of my eye is that I am compassionate about you
And my heart's secret is eloquent in you

6. So befriend the daughters of time with knowledge and piety
And leave behind what desires debase and displace

7. For by our desires, man cannot attain what he desires
To our desires, desiring is an alleviating affliction

8. Knowledge is not attained by "perhaps" or "maybe"
Know and whatever I become in the morning and evening

9. For the seeker of noble knowledge there are signs
That guide to it, like the sun making clear

10. So hate gathering wealth beyond your livelihood
And love explaining books wherever they are explained

11. And forsake the pleasure of soft sleep and the long night
And join the morning to the night reading and correcting

12. For no youth attains the heights or reaches his goal
A youth whose side atop cushions is cast

13. Unless one who has an ambition that leads
And an aspiration with which leaders clash

14. Reading by the sun and studying by lamp light
When darkness inclines towards lanterns it inclines

15. So traditions grant him what is in their cores
And from his breast he gives superfluities and grants

16. And makes brothers in God, for it
Opens doors of issues that were locked

17. And being alone in every seclusion
With righteous brothers wherever he turns

18. And for knowledge, be a serious seeker in God
For the seeker attains the thing sought

19. And do not destroy the fleeting world with your toil
For you will pass away, and He for whom you toil remains

20. I fear when the gathering is crowded with people
And you are asked the most difficult questions, you will falter

21. Sheikh Mu'ayyad Jama'a will task you
With a matter you cannot evade

22. Are you pleased that after Jama'a, knowledge, wisdom and piety
And the flowing of bounty will diminish?

23. You are his son, and rain is followed
By growth of flowers and overflowing streams on the meadow

24. It is enough that the people of Midad are a lesson
For those whose intellects are like mountains or weigh even more

25. Whoever mixes the true religion with passion
Becomes a lesson for both worlds and disgraced

26. I adjure you by your parents, both obey me
For it is disgraceful for an insolent man to overflow

27. So make my effort in seeking knowledge and rely
On the one reliance that brings success

28. I advised you, O coolness of my heart, for I
Am most worthy to advise in obeying God

29. People think good of me though I am
Evil for my religion, and disgraceful

30. Turning away from good lasting deeds
And inclining to deadly sinful ones

31. My life passed without knowledge or prevention
I frequented the resting places of the careless and wandered

32. If I had no precedence in knowledge forgiving me
From God for my sins, then my praise is unseemly

33. So O Lord, pardon the salty one and his son
And if there is no pardon, then announce the salty one