1. My excuse for loving Layla, my excuse
Do I have any refuge from her aloofness?

2. I clung to her like a naive gazelle
To the heedlessness of fickle time

3. She sways like the ropes of a litter
And walks like the undulating surface of a stream

4. Oh how many sighs I have
For remoteness accompanied by exhaling

5. I battle her standoffishness
And make it an ember in my conscience

6. And my body is sickly from her love
And my state is a precarious affair

7. She quenched Aleppo, Aleppo of presses
And its Lord provided it with pouring rain

8. I don't forget our stance at dawn
When the ornaments felt the chill of the frontiers

9. My ruddy cheeks turned pale
My white teeth blackened my hair

10. She tempted with beauty after
Filling the jealous one’s chest with hatred

11. If they were fair they’d summarize my torment
And the heaviness of my passion, the summarizing of poets

12. So the morning drink suits kissing frontiers
And Ibn al-Muzaffar, kissing little ones

13. A young man whose hand holds plenty
And his pasture is the protection of the beseecher

14. My father refused if fate waned, he refused
Wealthy in generosity, pure in conscience

15. Hesitating in the generosity of the first
Thus grasping its scope and final glory

16. Long is the flow of his polished swords
And his opinion more penetrating than the short

17. He has an ambition that rises with him
I sensed it in the crossing of crossings

18. And for mankind there is radiance in his face
That indicates good omen like the herald

19. As if his features were a north
Whispering the secrets of a verdant meadow

20. He described his virtuous traits for me
Above the turbidity of time, the purity of clear water

21. I looked at him and tested him
A brother, resolute, without parallel

22. You see his opinions with determination
Publicized beyond matters

23. Before the battalion in a quandary
That tears through the flanks of the gut

24. So O son of Guardians and he who ruled them
Revolving with the circling celestial sphere

25. With the cycles of dew they uttered welfare
And bestowed upon their questioners cycles

26. Have you not lived well while the others suffered ruin
With brown-skinned and white-skinned males?

27. And every young man above the cooking pot of desire
And intertwined like bitter separation

28. If you approached it was more than acceptance
And if you turned away it was more than turning away

29. Those who do not see charity ransom you
Nor join the wing of the destitute

30. When asked, their palms are made of iron
And their faces of rock

31. If they whitened the faces of their chivalry
Then that is the whiteness of rubble

32. You have captivated me with engagement's shackles
So I broke free of the shackles of the captive

33. I hoped in you, best of those hoped in
To mend the broken and facilitate the difficult

34. And no young man honors the generous
After you other than your memorable one

35. As if when I clung to you
I clung to the pillar of my mighty dwelling

36. The Feast attacked so receive it well
And its arrival and passage

37. With generosity gift me a garment
That smells of a garden's bouquet

38. I'll trail its train knowing
I'm more entitled to it than Jarir

39. And take it absolved, free
Refusing to be for the wretched thief

40. When I recite it will do to the minds
What a goblet of wine cannot do

41. And you and your sons live in bounty
As long as time remains, O son of Samir