1. Is patience of use to one whom patience aids not,
When care on care weighs heavy on his thought?

2. Or gentleness, when the fair dealings of the loved one
Only torment a heart, be it e'en rock?

3. My excuse for loving, to the blamers, is
Did they but taste the sweetness of love, they would excuse.

4. They blamed and chided till he left me quite,
His visit once a month, his night a year.

5. Yet no marvel she wonders, that ignorant one,
Having never witnessed my pallor and decay.

6. In steeds well-omened glory is approved,
As gloom in lions with filed teeth.

7. A questioner asked, in wonderment,
“What has undone thee?” I answered her,

8. “Good lady, ‘twas the far one or the break, or both together,
For separation and estrangement have undone me.”

9. A friend recalls dear native scenes, and asks
If memory avails at all, companion mine!

10. Between us and the spot the rolling sands lie vast,
And barren is the desert breadth between.

11. These trackless wilds no faint of purpose daunts,
Though the way-wise they baffle, and the patient’s strength outpaces.

12. Like ship between opposing rocks beset,
Girdled by angry seas on every side.

13. From his wonted meadows foes have turned my friend aside,
While for his hill-resort longs many an ardent gaze.

14. Black men and white from handy quivers speed
Their arrows, while their bow-hands grasp are brown or fair.

15. A folk whom, if the spy has reached their camp,
Satiety ne’er visited, nor eagles sated are.

16. A land whose every breach let warriors fill,
There shall the fortune of the war be overthrown.

17. A day as though the earth for horror quaked,
I pierced their squadrons’ serried rank and firm.

18. It marches like the spreading of the rain-flood o’er
The plain, its footsteps on their skirts blood-red.

19. Weeping I escort him, tears of sorrow rain
In showers down my cheek, in torrents from my breast.

20. I turned, my heart cleft through for his bereavement,
And towards his howdah many a wistful glance I threw.

21. Among the Hajj some bright-faced maidens mov’d,
Screened only by their own majestic mien.

22. A palm-spray in whose clasp none like her is held,
A tent-dweller of whom no like tent-dwellers know.

23. Know they the knavery of the feast these ruins hid?
Felt they the thrill these barren wastes have known?

24. Became Meccah’s valley-side once green again?
Once more the stony tract brought forth the bitter weed?

25. May God water a people amidst whom thy camp was pitched
With clouds in hosts foregathered, no mere sprinkling showers!