1. The longing and yearning went on too long,
Summer came and the veil was lifted,

2. Neither can one whose heart is filled with sorrows tarry,
Nor one who seeks to depart when departure is ordained.

3. Life is recorded in a book for a destined span
That Fate would harmonize;

4. Not given to the avaricious is wealth due to greed,
Yet to the generous wealth may snowball.

5. Wealthy is he whose soul is self-content,
Wretched is one tormented though opulent.

6. If a young man conducts with dignity and forbearance,
Triumph will crown his old age.

7. One of much wealth and offspring cannot rule
If deficient in temperance, lacking self-respect.

8. Who lives with dignity will never face misery,
For one day his trespasses will bring calamity.

9. Life's vicissitudes will constantly assail him
Until they erode him like vessels worm-eaten.

10. Every severity that befell a living soul,
Will be followed by the ease it foreshadows.

11. Tell the godfearing death has occurred--beware!
Cannot piety now offer you protection?

12. Why bewail the afflicted? Of what use is weeping
When death comes, who can tears revive?

13. Tell your soul whom death will spare?--
Grief at all times will furnish her solace.

14. Lament the disasters, therein lies comfort
For a soul when consolation is of use.

15. Firmly established things will perish
As will each living soul; all wealth will vanish.

16. Graybeards and suckling babes share a common fate,
The frailest, utterly helpless.

17. A man in his prime may be brought low
Were a ransom offered, it would not be accepted!

18. When the moment of death comes for him
No soul can be safeguarded from it.

19. Any brotherhood is transitory in this world,
No bond of brotherhood can long endure.

20. Bestow respect and affection on the wise
Sever not ties with him through disaffection.

21. Do not befriend or answer the call of a fool,
His friendship works harm, therein lies malady

22. Breaking with him is healthy in every matter,
Like lancing an abscess to promote healing.

23. Honor your guest though sparse the fare.
Let him take the lion's share.

24. Apportion not tonight's meal as tomorrow's store,
Each day has its own appropriate provision.

25. Every wound will eventually heal,
Except one inflicted by spite--that will not repair

26. It lingers in hearts though hidden from sight
Like an incurable disease that medicine cannot cure

27. When you recite poetry composed by you
Song will distinguish the unworthy from the sincere.

28. Thus will inferior poets be driven away,
As torrents wash gravel downstream in their flow.

29. Some poets are noble, accomplished,
While others--hack writers--will only speak rubbish.

30. Is there one kind of poetry that profits and edifies
And one that no wise man will applaud?

31. Even if a poet howls like a dog, I find
That dogs collectively will slay him.

32. If probed, the dregs of his saddlebags,
Will reveal nothing within but straw.

33. I confide my secret to one who benefits me
When together in solitude comfort have we.

34. O Hind, can you revive the dead,
Will our debts remain unpaid forever?

35. You seduced souls but to annihilate them
While they thirstily drain your spring.

36. I will always cherish her unsullied candor
Though years of harmony fade away.

37. If our loved ones abandon and shun us
And even her kith and kin abandon her too,

38. I will visit her dwellings in the creek bed
Where glory abides according to custom.

39. Swirling around are ghosts and specters
As though her palm trees were made of fog.

40. Every rumbling, pliant, supple sand dune
Resembles another, in seamless uniformity.

41. As if seated atop are hydrogen skins,
Impervious to piercing screams.

42. Resembling camel litters of a feast, a wedding,
Answered by cameleers with echoing shouts.

43. The wailing women's cries
Mingle with the howls emitted at a death.

44. Therein wild cats rear their young,
Sheltered and shrouded by the wilderness.

45. Clusters of cubs, weak and few,
Too awkward to be captured, roam at large.

46. Scanning about furtively, slyly,
As though they were shivering, with no coats for warmth,

47. Their fur appearing to be smeared with a paste of cinnabar,
Bonded to them like an adhesive glue.

48. When they seek their feeding grounds they arise
And the newborn disperse, mewing piteously.

49. They drink from clefts oozing lymph and sweat
As well as drained broth from cooked meat.

50. They converse in some barbarous tongue
Their greatest pleasure being wantonness.

51. They left the scraps for the runts,
Then turned to suckle each puling whelp.

52. When would those wild cats drink their fill
With snouts dipped fully in the trough?

53. Gluttons drank their fill; before their greedy maws
Was everything their bellies could hold.

54. Water vessels never drained or wanting,
No need for them to seek a weaning.

55. With the fledglings satisfied, they attended to them
Caterwauling amidst jubilant cheers.

56. I left the outposts with a surly curmudgeon
In desolate precincts that solitude had abandoned.

57. Scarecrow-thin, mangy, and gaunt,
Barefoot, without so much as shoes.

58. The instep-raiser among them appears to be
A rain-damaged enclosure, crumbling in decay.

59. Reins held in place by a well-strung bow-string
Prancing ostentatiously with a swaggering gait.

60. Strutting coquettishly like a shabby peddler,
Imagination and conceit hastening her pace.

61. Shall I visit a soothsayer to disclose
A cryptic marvel, a puzzling mystery?

62. That I may hear the unique verses of a stranger's poem
And render praise where tribute is due.

63. Ever generous, the more his generosity abounds
The more prosperity and well-being will grow.

64. He wears a cloak in which I detect no blemish,
Above his loincloth lies a mantle.

65. To the Shummar clans of Quraysh he roams about,
While glory abides in their havens.

66. Quraysh perfects kindness and hospitality
Unlike the system of patronage you devised.

67. You split open the ranks of Azd with your ram
As clashing head-on was its cherished desire.

68. Its nature is to butt heads with rivals
Engaging in lethal combat and domination.

69. With swords he shreds potentates to bits
The more ferociously strife rages.

70. You excused his enemies and pardoned them
Thereby quenching the spilling of blood.

71. With divine sanction you secured for them dominion
As sublimely as the firmament encompasses the heavens.

72. You revived generosity though once expired
Without God, magnanimity could not revive.

73. So every tribe, be it Ma`addite or Yemenite
Harbors for him profound veneration.

74. You maintained ties with your brother
God rewards profoundly the upholding of family ties.

75. We anticipate that he will become our imam,
Hope in al-Walid's reign he will succeed.

76. Hisham and al-Walid and each living soul
For your sake would readily lay down their lives.

77. The demise of your father was momentous
Had the field of death not been left vacant.

78. Your assets cannot be diminished through prudence
If destiny's tryst fails to transpire.

79. You are the scion of caliphs from Quraysh
Among them you were raised, despite their enmity.

80. `Atikah who inherited valor from Kuraiz
Alongside war--so her sons exemplify glory.

81. `Aqilah's nobility excels over all Quraysh ladies
To the point that the gentlewomen bowed down before her.

82. Your ancestry derives from a lofty lineage,
None can aspire to its towering heights.

83. Every sublime and virtuous trait is embodied in it,
Sagacity fortified by chivalric gallantry.

84. The people's imam, no callow whelp, no upstart,
Nor one outwitted by a wise man's shrewdness.

85. To sycophants you would grant lavish gifts
Beyond what encomia should rightly cost.

86. And destitute visitors from a faraway land
You made provision for them upon their arrival.

87. You remedied their poverty and dire need
Thus the veil obscuring them was lifted.

88. Your tribal allies are the best allies among Quraysh
While they are innocent of every allegation of wrongdoing.

89. Those are the front runners in every act of goodness
Should the laggards allege otherwise, they lie!

90. The finest of the censured are the kinsmen of al-`A~`sha~
As the best of mountains is Mount Hira~'.