1. Tell the dear ones to sleep while justice is awake
Destiny has taken flight and truth and rank are clear

2. What strength did you think it had that you believed it
Events now acquiesce and yield

3. Learn truth and faith, recoil
If you find sincerity and faith pleasing

4. The expected misfortune was unveiled and your hopes
Are now sorrows and laments

5. If not for ignorance no raving fool would be alive
Hoping for the impossible, no thirsty man would beg for water

6. All the clouds are useless if they wait
For abundant rain, all effort is loss

7. They announced good tidings to the boys before they knew
That among the people they are but boys

8. What worry keeps them sleepless about Egypt
When its harm and vanity and idolatry have passed

9. No phantom of power distracted their fancies
Without kindling in them yearning and infatuation

10. The lovers asked about him so their wings were tested
And they will never stop yearning for him

11. In every limb a worry appears to him
From every wing hot lava of anger flows

12. Oh Qays, Layla is busy with other things, and you
Oh Qays, have a melting heart and are downcast

13. Your tears of pity are wasted in love
The tears of an eye that is ill and straying

14. If I had a cure I would heal the fallen one with it
For people are siblings, they seek compassion

15. A people whose time has passed, their playground gone
That was not an era, nor were they

16. Vexed after they had perished in their idle fancies
Falsehood has no power, only truth prevails

17. A just and merciful rule is not like
A rule whose ways are injustice and tyranny

18. What deceived them about the son of Mahmoud? Did they not know
That the leader is the glory of the Nile's title?

19. They supposed and plunged into their blindness
Events reveal the truth to nations

20. Justice is his goal, the scales are in his hands
Whether a disputing neighbor or measuring scales

21. He who falsely claims glory cannot endure
A cup of lofty honor that excites him

22. Rule did not increase his prestige when he assumed it
Prestige overflowed and fame resounded

23. Kinship calls him and he attains it
Speech contends and the people are confused

24. His ship founders engulfed but he raises it
He sails it through the tempest of fate's vicissitudes

25. A shaykh of politics, not a shaykh of raving fools they mistook
For politics has types and colors

26. I blame them with fiery blame but then I'm stopped
Because the people lack minds and intellects

27. Truth in their view is no truth that foreheads bow to
Nor is falsehood manifest falsehood

28. The people are dead, and if they have scriptures
They are but shrouds and winding sheets

29. Do you not see them gloomy, smeared in disgrace
Debased, clothed in shame and abandonment

30. They are shunned by all with sense, detested
By the eyes and ears of all noble folk

31. He continues hoping to witness God's judgment befall them
If they are touched by one human with reason

32. The ruins of ill fortune cry out
With owls and crows in all corners

33. The blindness lifted, the worshipped are idols
Of bodies, the envied is Satan

34. Go in peace Muhammad, do not let their clamor distract you
Does a lion worry when mice squeak?

35. We count you among the exalted, and you are their match
When peers and equals are few

36. Son of the living! Your people's flank has fallen
For each people has in glory a structure

37. The crops around you are withered and the earth is barren
While genius is rivers and streams

38. How the torrent of your eloquent knowledge poured
From the shackles of ingratitude and ill treatment

39. O you who fair judged the people against their oppressors
Fair judge the country's forces that wrongdoing overwhelmed

40. The country's forces assist those who work in them
While from their rulers they have no allies

41. They punished us with deprivation, and even if they guaranteed
The livelihood of the people, we never despaired like they did

42. The wretchedness of deprivation is a distinction
For the virtuous, and denial of sustenance a trial

43. Rule in the view of the wise has four aspects
Resolve, discretion, kindness, and beneficence