1. Your virtues have blocked all paths,
So what can the tongue say if it spoke?

2. You have reached me with loyalty though you separate from me,
O keeper of pearls, strung evenly.

3. You have imitated me while striving
To imitate the necklace with its like.

4. You have set out perfection in every word,
With which every falsehood is made true.

5. You have sent its signs speaking to me,
So my heart leapt at the mention - shocked.

6. Canal banks like gardens, flourishing,
From which I have grazed my leafy eyes.

7. And you have come to me with eloquence, woven seamlessly,
Its composition and rhetoric composed.

8. With meanings, which if they praise
A meaning, we see it stolen from them.

9. No eloquence, O you who speaks freely, if
My thoughts were restricted though unconfined.

10. With letters - so gently handle them -
Until your sweetness has scented them.

11. And wit which intelligence flashes through,
If lightning possessed it, it would have burned.

12. And speech whose blade
Continually strips bare folly, sharp and smooth.

13. All the kings of speech are subjected
By you to a king who marshals them as troops.

14. The lightning has striven though its flashes
Against the patience of the clouds, but could not reach it.

15. And I said thus has He created
A speaker, I said "Thus has He created."