1. A people have won fine garments of knowledge,
And a clear, bright watering place of dreams.

2. Yet we have won only the outer husk,
Like one who gains only the marrow from a bone.

3. When they spread out the carpets of religious decisions for others,
For us they spread out the furnishings of scales and firmness.

4. Knowledge is only what guides and by which one is guided
To the watering place of existence out of nonexistence.

5. Glory is nothing but the knowledge belonging to its owner;
It is the crown of the people of virtue, war, and peace.

6. Has any poet become an example among people
Even if he has elegant prose and well-crafted verse?

7. Has any elegy by a poet continued
For a son, weighing as much as a father or mother?

8. Leave poetry, O coolness of my heart and its people,
And be a seeker of knowledge and befriend the brother of knowledge.

9. Preoccupy your concerns with everything strange
Of knowledge—I ransom you—do not be concerned with worries.

10. Prepare your understanding for what you seek,
For there is no good in seeking knowledge without understanding.

11. It is knowledge—nothing else. And through it
Faith and self-restraint through wisdom have become general.

12. The prophets were successors in seeking knowledge,
As stated clearly in the Book from the Unlettered One.

13. It is the stars that shine, by which one is guided,
No one who has traveled by their light has gone astray.