1. By Him who guided love into my heart
Your eyes have fascinated me, O graceful deer

2. They looked at me, though from sickly eyelids
And I knew the place of love from my inner pain

3. They gazed from under the eyelids’ shades
Making the sky of beauty like bright stars

4. I did not know that the deer of the highland
Graze between remoteness and closeness

5. They have taken with separation every lover
A remaining soul that does not awake from love

6. They saw him carrying arrows unsheathed
Unaware that gazelles are in the burrows

7. Had the ardent lover known that his dove
Did not greet the caravan with “Peace be upon you”

8. When they saw nearness aiding against disdain
For the sake of love, they imposed distance upon nearness

9. O closeness between youthfulness and graying hair
O remoteness between joyfulness and the heart

10. Nothing has kept me from sleep like a groan
As if it has meaning from a moist branch

11. He folded his perfume’s excess like a garment
As the full moon folded its light in the darkness

12. He wore of his glances like an unsheathed sword
So the eyelids began to fear his nearness

13. I used to fear the sword, and the sword was one
What can I do, if he wore sword upon sword?

14. My friend, will I ever find happiness
That will know me, after the sweetness of time?