1. Had the Uniter of eternal union willed,
Or my healer to youth returned,

2. I'd have no sorrow for love, though I'd not been
My friend, wont to leave it behind.

3. I made the path of patience smooth, but for a sigh
That filled my eyes with tears and pillow.

4. And many a fluttering kerchief of parting
The youthful passion kindled and called.

5. I brought you a girlhood you'd not forgotten,
Who came to you in her litters swaying.

6. Her waist I'd girdled, and made supple-slender,
And kissed the wine-sweet saliva of her mouth.

7. I gave her pure wine to drink, while night
Cooled the heat of her youth, or nearly.

8. O ladder, had you been just, you'd have lightened my pain,
And exchanged my pillow for a couch.

9. You put far from me the reach of union,
And with the spy's nearness, further aloof.

10. Increase, O Zayd, my exile's banishment,
For I have sold my patience from you, gaining.

11. I wish you none but me for lover,
Spending, and none but the vizier open-handed.

12. A king who made the sanctuaries free, bearing
Whatever he wished but rancor and grudges;

13. Who gave the gazelles protected, the roes
Keen-horned, the smooth-sided she-camels fleet;

14. Whose heads, save his companions', never
Parted from the sheathing of their swords;

15. Whose keen blades dyed the slender spears,
His horses and spear staves what wonders attained!

16. O son of Muhammad ibn Hubayrah,
In war you showed lancers most wary,

17. You who led destruction against the foe
Perforce, else it had not obeyed;

18. With dusky squadrons you snorted in battle,
Stretching out over the enemy your arm;

19. They grew up in the faith of dissension, and so
Became to the swords of the lords a harvest;

20. You attacked them on a towering, shining charger
The sun of day wore mourning for;

21. It flashed, and the white blades glittered, and went on
Till its flashing made lightning recoil.

22. Mas'ud the noble found before you no escape,
No resolution the Caliph ar-Rashid.

23. From you his blackness turned white when he saw
Slaughter you had prepared for dawn its blackness.

24. And he went off vanquished, while you returned
Triumphant, to break a pact no more.

25. By my life, you cleft a nation whose crown
At evening was the crown of kings a pillar.

26. No fortress in Khurasan did the hands
Of Yahya the vizier build and lead

27. Better than you, who smote prostration's zealots
With columns scattering ruin and decay.

28. A folk, when they took up arms one hapless day,
Destroyed the foe and the polished blades.

29. God grant me, made a poet by you,
Wealth, and to excel those who excelled!

30. To make you forget Ka'b and ar-Ra'iq and Malik
And the two 'Ushayrs and Jarwal and Ziyad.

31. You were born with the talent of verse which
You perfected, though it later failed.

32. Poetry that diffuses fragrance of gum from its midst,
No perfume reaching it from Baghdad.

33. I have come to you, Ibn Abi Sarh, plainspoken,
Not like a questioner of my ancestry Chosroes or Murad.

34. Many a hopeless pauper have you released
And freed by kindness from his shackle.

35. Your ambition was not content with lands as dwelling,
But built on a branch of the sky a refuge.

36. Your wont has been to honor every loving friend,
In disasters with it made steadfast.

37. With Syrian swords like polished cheeks
And Yemeni blades like braided hair.

38. He who saluted you in my eulogies
Is as though he saluted an inanimate thing.

39. My praise makes him forget his stinginess, though
He'd give, and if he gave he'd still be niggard.

40. But for your lavishness you'd be changed
Among people from folk to folk.