1. The abodes refuse me; how full of yearning they are!
And how clearly they show their desolation to the stranger!

2. So school yourself, through the desolation of the abode, to share in its desolation.
A youth possessed by passion, and one depressed-both will be prodigal.

3. Do not hinder me from a halt by means of which
I may cure the malady of separation; for it is a death-potion.

4. Give the streaming sands a draught from my affairs;
For he who is emaciated by grief is most emaciated.

5. Care has spread its wing in the air, so that it seems
As if, beneath misfortunes, it were a brow bound with great sorrow.

6. On the morrow of sadness came anguish moaning
amid the lightning flashes of your songs, O singer.

7. An exhalation or a tear is the mark of youth:
both are the concern of a plunderer or a noble and great man.

8. If it were not for lamentation, the surface of the encampment
and the plain of al-Mushaqqar would fancy themselves dejected.

9. Travel on, people of wants! The rain-clouds of bounty will shower upon you a plenteous rain from their water-skins.
Events have been pinioned by their own harm,

10. and the country in its confusion is imprisoned.
They have undertaken the heavy load of care, and set out upon a journey

11. which levels the difficult road, but which in itself is firm.
Then, when they had cast it from their shoulders,

12. resolutely-while success was guaranteed to them-
They found the aspect of the King bright, and they attained to

13. Harun: you would say that Harun himself was there.
They found the Prince of the Faithful, whose bounty

14. is the dripping cloud and its shade is wide-spread.
So they set out while their confidence was firm in the Guardian,

15. whose augury was fortunate for them.
Those eyes were refreshed by him, those cheeks grew radiant;

16. and how delicious was their bloom!
They possessed the bridle of life through the King whose nature

17. is firmly defended by the fortresses of noble deeds.
He is a King, when the mention of whom reaches men's hearing,

18. hope in him droops, and he remains firm.
He is a lion: when the banner shakes you see him

19. towering above the excited throng, and it cowers.
For its milk-bowls there is one who lies in wait, and for its orations

20. one who is intent, and for its full moons one who wears its badge.
God-may He be praised and exalted! - made the Caliphate to be in him-

21. His word "Be!" and it is.
And indeed we saw it to be his in our hearts,

22. While there were pretenders around him with their interiors and exteriors.
And therefore it was said, with regard to manifest surmises,

23. "There is a truth, and in some hearts are secrets."
And we knew, ever since he was a child, that he

24. was the trustee of the Lord of the Worlds.
O son of the Caliphs, the essence of your kindliness

25. is a bounty that dissolves harshness and is gentle.
A light upon you from the past, as though it

26. were a clear light upon it from the Prophet.
Through you the Saffah and Mansur ascend, as also

27. the Mahdi, the Upright, and the Secure.
He who lives in the brightness of the Family knows that they

28. are a replenishment among the replenishments of Heaven.
The horsemen of a kingdom whose Caliphs are lions:

29. the shadow of guidance has departed from it, and it has no lair.
A people who inherited from the Apostle a partition made for them

30. as a fence in the Quran, firm.
In them is the tranquility of their Lord, His Book,

31. His vicegerency, and His Name, the Erasing.
A valley of the Sultan protected, in which

32. naught diminished the kingdom save religion.
In a white, Abbasid state,

33. encompassed by victory and consolidation,
Islam became glorious through its Sultanate,

34. and India is a part of its outskirts, and China.
Every hypocrite professing enmity to the trustee of God

35. redeems him by the hatred stored up within his breast.
Of those whose right hands distribute favors, nor have

36. both your hands ever ceased to be our place of rest.
The wild creatures are summoned by your rule and pasture,

37. and the lion, in awe, humbles itself in its lair.
Above your glory there is no ascent of glory, nor

38. is all boasting, apart from boasting in you, base.
There came to you from the composition of the tongue a necklace

39. in which were strung pearls stored away.
It was shod with the sandals of Hadramawt, was decked out

40. in fine elaboration and artful adornment.
Tribal and refined, therein were multiplied

41. the movements of the people of the earth, all still.
Its source is prolific, the ornament of its ode

42. is the ornament of guidance, and its composition harmonious.
As for the meanings, they are unsullied virgins when

43. expressed - but the rhymes give them support.
The craft of the tongue sought them out, extending

44. abundant streams when the discourse was exhausted.
It behaves generously, though harboring an ill opinion - not like one

45. enamored of his son and his poetry.
It aims its purpose at you, while its concern

46. is a hope it everlastingly cherishes for you.
So its homeland is in the realm of hopes,

47. and its expectation is where expectation whimpers.
Perhaps that which it hopes for, of what has not been,

48. either soon or late, will be through you.