1. We greet you, so surrender, O towering heights,
Though you're tried, and the ordeal on you is prolonged.

2. I was guided to surrender upon a blood-price
Made different by ages gone by.

3. They flowed turbulently, necks of torrents billowing with it
In early morn dumped by a downpour or late eve's drizzle.

4. So they are like tatters embellished outwardly
Or a book dampened by the wetness.

5. Our dwellings had settled in them
Until an era changed, wicked and confused.

6. Nothing new in it lasts with its freshness
Except briefly, and none loyal remains.

7. Life is no life unless approved by an eye,
No state except one bound to change.

8. And people - whoever meets good, they say to him
What he desires, and the rash mother of the fool hopes on.

9. One who's patient may attain some of his need
While loss tags along the hasty one's hurry.

10. Dusk came, to rest the heart it suffices,
And for landmarks below it there is work.

11. In every rugged valley the mirage flows
To make dusk, while its rider is of fear and alarm in dread.

12. It rouses the slumber that used to be there
When it shifts, and the haze when it travels on.

13. Until you see the gloomy-faced gazelles wandering
And the wide-stepping one whose pace staggers.

14. Timidly turning glances with tearful eyes
On their cheeks when the kohl is dissolving.

15. The one glancing sidelong, her eyebrows bent
As if she's a wild heart when the bonds slacken.

16. The caravan throws her the camel stallion, intercepting
Her neck, its nose-rope slackened, the breast straps undone.

17. They walk slowly, their thighs not negligent,
Nor do their chests on their thighs depend.

18. So they intercept, while the pebbles are glowing,
The wind still, the shade straight overhead.

19. They follow the lofty eyes, deeming her
Crazed, or seeing what the camel does not.

20. When they arrived, a prophet, and it settled on them,
Bewildered, like the lines of tattoo when spreading.

21. Upon a place covered with plants not made to stay
Except by our Changer, the One Swift to Reckon.

22. Then the guide kept on with it, and spared it
The belly of one whose plants are berries and palms.

23. Until they arrived at the barren tracts, and almost
Did the garment's white linen ignite.

24. And I had wound when it wound a bend
To the left, while to our right the leg.

25. At a caller who called us a call that lifted
From us drowsiness, though to our necks it leaned.

26. I heard it, while the does of the hillock were facing away,
Beyond it, and the easy slope of the dune.

27. So I said to the band when the glimpsing of them
From the right of the Hibya - a look before - ascended:

28. Is it a glancing of lightning my eyesight saw
Or the visage of the towering heights crumbled by time?

29. It guides us to all that was our loftiness
The scent of the south wind which the dripping dew flooded.

30. And I would, if I wished, stay the night, and with me would stay
On the bedding, the well-mannered, slowly pacing housemate.

31. And the blondness of dawn lifts it,
Softened by the gentle wetness its edges thickened.

32. I say to the letter, when it complained of the outcome
Of travel, and its resolve journeying ruined it:

33. If you return from Abu Uthman successful,
Then what's difficult may seem easy to the successful one.

34. The people of Medina, let not their affair trouble you
When fate befalls the servant of the One.

35. As for Quraysh - you'll never meet them
Unless the best one preserved and clad.

36. Unless they're God's mountain no mountains
Matched, nor leveled with its loftiness.

37. A people who stabilized Islam and resisted
The people of the Messenger - after him no messengers.

38. Whoever makes peace with them will see ease in his life
And you'll never see one who wished them harm restful.

39. How much favor I gained from them undeserved
When I can hardly bear poverty.

40. And how much of fate they steadied my foot
While I still with enemies skirmish.

41. They made not peace with one who seeks my harm
Nor did they poison the good they did.

42. They're the kings and the sons of kings they are
And the upholders of it and the prime statesmen.