1. Let me erect poetry's pavilion in Egypt
Until the Nile overflows with blood in its land

2. You blame me for showing my torment
And how could what's inside me be concealed and suppressed?

3. It's your way to hide, not reveal ardor
But it must be spread and known

4. Passion exceeding the heart to rise
And purest love melted in the eye to be swallowed

5. And weakest forms of love are muffled love
Dealing secretly and blamed

6. Calm down you two blamers, for in me
Is ardor for Egypt too painful to be muffled

7. A land gave me love’s sweet drink and I charged
A heart between my ribs to watch over its purity

8. Its love grows, whenever its wretchedness increases
And the wounds of passion grow, whenever it grows

9. I kept for it two covenants, a covenant of youth
When pleasures grew old, as they grew old

10. And another that will clothe me in white hair
And dress me in a gown adorned with silver threads

11. A man is only his people and homeland
If they are gone, he will face harm wherever he goes

12. And live the life of the wretched and expect
Disgrace what remains with him for time immemorial

13. And no gallant whose people are disgraced
Can hope to find honor amongst people

14. With its roots the plant lives, if you want
To uproot it, it dies in agony

15. And I haven’t seen homelands greater in sanctity
And a more honorable pact and greater oath

16. I swore by Egypt and its plains, adhering
To its threshing floors, every tosser tosses

17. The Nile’s patience ran out at the ignorance of youths
They deemed it ungrateful and filled it with blame

18. It still goes unappreciated, as if
It gives unwillingly, forced to submit

19. It’s no wonder the Egyptian interpreted
But the Nile did wrong and sinned

20. The channels of evil overflow from it, watering
The souls of its people, unquenched from thirst

21. Is there for the tyrants every day a crime
That renews dashed hopes, ever darker?

22. The past was admonishing, if only
The admonitions of time guided the blind brother

23. Oh what a day it was, singular in ill omens
And what grief, twin in terror!

24. They met it with songs of joy, as though
They met a feast for Egypt and harvest time

25. And they prepared another, time would fall short of
Falling dead, while gray hairs are stoned

26. Remote from disaster’s whip, what refuge have we
If epidemics rise from it, with no immunity?

27. When calamities therein are routed, you’d think
It cleaves a thunderbolt, defeated, humbled

28. It floods and fells the humble and climbs
To the eminent of the people, a ladder

29. It shakes the pyramids, then its greatest
Catastrophe takes away, leaving only ruins

30. And it hurls the Nile’s floods out of it, overflowing
With deaths, drowned and afloat

31. By my life, it’s time to turn from passion
And the ignorant must learn

32. My patriots, he who wears a garment of evil
Though it pleases him one day, embroidered

33. My patriots, matters’ attributes
Become clear, and careful thought most wise

34. My patriots, why do I see you as though
You see the rugged path straighter and more upright?

35. If an upright guide stops you from straying
You get angry and call him a traitor, seeking spoils

36. And you go where evil emanates from your whims
Letting the depths gape, the depths gape

37. You lead from a straying and unseeing people
To the rightly guided people an unruly mob

38. Come to us! We are but brethren
And the ropes of kinship must not unravel

39. Come to us! We are but brethren
And I saw taking gently the most prudent course

40. Our paths are one, we are all
Egypt’s children, refusing to be oppressed or broken

41. And no shame except to remain seized
And remain prey for days on end, partitioned

42. I am innocent of homelands if disaster befalls
And I am not wrapped in the shroud of terror first

43. I stand ready for the burden which
Boulders piled remain humbled beneath

44. And since I was sent with poetry as guide
I bring it revealed and come to it inspired

45. And it is not up to me to keep it on track, but
God’s hand steers it, so it goes straight

46. It's shameful that my country suffers and prospers
And like death for it to be destroyed and I survive

47. I yearn for its independence and keeping it
When we mend the rupture, a destined matter

48. Shall I seek mayhem and all of us strive
To death match grounds, in an orderly endeavor?

49. Illness took hold so strength dissolved
And the mark of ignorant illness is it takes control

50. Religions divide us but God is One
And all earth's people trace back to Adam

51. The East's shackled wanderings whispered there, so
The Easterner cannot make progress

52. It settled in our heads and left
The place of inhibition empty and erased

53. My fellow Easterners, religion won't strike you down, I see
The West, without resolve and knowledge, would not attain

54. Ask it, when it stalks prey does it
Spare Christian or have mercy on Muslim?

55. It is death, or the East will quake
With tremors felling both awake and asleep