1. Should he forgive the ardent passions,
And heal whom he has healed, and show mercy to captives,

2. And reward us - splitter of the grain and date-stone -
With a love that you own half of,

3. My day has been prolonged, O Layla, though it was not
As long as my night that lost its dawn,

4. And my weakness was doubled by your intoxication,
Taking from my eyes the gazelle and the full moon.

5. Exile has turned my home of joy away from me,
And settled there sorrow, grief, and harm.

6. Why don't you show me your hidden self?
Nor openly gloat to those who wish me ill?

7. Make reconciliation, leave discord behind,
Seize our chance, spurn base enemies.

8. Will my verses be demolished, and you their neighbour,
Yet you write, O Layla, and no one reads?

9. Is there no just judge to reconcile us
With an hour's union to banish estrangement?

10. And divert from me the tyranny of your eyebrow
That has winked at the waist of wandering lovers?

11. Gird that waist with my engraved ring,
And enchain me, melted by my fervent love.

12. Was it my love or my executioner, or has
The blackness of my fate decreed that I melt, conquered?

13. Your tenderness, O Layla, is a night visit
Granting me bliss and stealing my misery.

14. So dawn smiles, as day smiled on empty ground,
And I come gladly to praise the excellent one.

15. The kingdom of the Near One has brought bounty
to us,

16. And averted from us loss and poverty.
How much evil have you fended off, and how many heads laid low!

17. How much good have you sown, how much evil uprooted!
He came while Syria's land was thorny ground,

18. So he left it minus the thorns that surrounded its flowers.
He dispelled its fears and troubles from it,

19. Cloaking it in his compassion's veil.
He restored its ease, till it forgot hardship,

20. And founded schools where ignorance was erased.
After that we saw no ignorant men there

21. Who are duped, nor cunning ones who dupe, nor fools.
So to God belongs inception and bestowal,

22. To God belongs creation and disposal!
I knew all men when I knew him,

23. And plunged into an ocean of his bounty.
My praise of his praise was no mere praise,

24. But an obligation shunning unbelief.
The priceless pearl remains successful,

25. With fullest praise, gladdening the heart forever!