1. Your praise has ennobled thought,
And talk of you has adorned biography.

2. The effects of your generosity are manifest,
Neither sea nor rain deny them.

3. And your forefathers’ bravery in battle is a lesson,
If minds would learn.

4. Where are those who felt secure in their remoteness
And every feeling of security was fraught with danger?

5. You harbored a resolve against their likes
So fate raced ahead of your sword.

6. It was as if the vicissitudes feared your attacking army
When you were capable of attacking.

7. So there came to them a crushing disaster
Like death, leaving naught, annihilating all.

8. The whites of your swords flash bare in their sheaths,
Each and every one, by your life, a male palm-tree.

9. What can they do, when amidst its twisting folds
Lie length—and in their lives, shortness?

10. Ask a seasoned warrior about them and what
It did to them, and where the news is known.

11. And from it one tossed away bleeds freely
In every spot—blood shed wantonly.

12. The lands hurl him so far
That no trace of him remains behind them.

13. You brought them as neighbors, but they fled,
Miserable the lot, and the encounter!

14. And you saved a band
Whose forebears’ nobility you never sensed.

15. Indeed you asked, and they did not stint;
You made a pact with them—no treachery.

16. And if you boast of the house they built for you,
Sublime, at which vision falls short—

17. With it the lion leading its seekers of victory
Vanquished kings in their strongholds.

18. Upon the gray hair he cast his turban
And gained victory in every defile.

19. He ascended above the stars, so his envious foe
Thought heaven itself was falling to him.

20. Through him the world was delivered, though before
None knew it save in harm and benefit.

21. The turbidities of time vanished during his reign,
Though all else beneath it is turbid.

22. Its tribulations witnessed his competence—
Times needs must lean upon him.

23. It was as if his abilities were determined
Never to disappoint an expectant soul.

24. Amazing, one deluded when your swords’ signs
And warnings have appeared!

25. One exposing his throat to your spearhead
After throats were miserable through it!

26. Hope toyed with the wits of his lofty glory,
And thought sported with the tends of his mind.

27. Of the vast span, less than which is duration
Too narrow for a life to encompass.

28. When the stars are pondered, there are neither
Arrows, nor bow, nor bowstring.

29. Drowsiness deluded a rational man;
The times will wake to it and apologize.

30. Perfection feared for your supremeness through it
And the moon dreads perfection.

31. Do not neglect it—they know well
What horsemen they saw and what they deemed.

32. O son of exalted ones, through whose nobility
Muḍar took pride! And what, pray, is Muḍar?

33. Their lineage suffices you as ample aid,
A meaning for the praiser I abbreviate.

34. After my praises reached you, my poetry
Seems paltry—yet there are means other.

35. Leave rhymed prose though it pace on,
Were it stars, it is said to be veiled.

36. For so often your hands overflowed upon
A people—they rhymed not, nor prosified.

37. No step delayed me from them,
Had there been in me and them any insight.

38. But it is fate—I accept it unwillingly,
And how can fate be overcome?

39. Between me and fortune a darkness lies,
Blind, with neither planets nor magic.

40. Your brilliant character would not there guide
Though it dawned in that horizon.

41. Yet I see—far from you—graciousness possesses no
Shade or fruit for me, among them.

42. Had I been roused to keenness of discernment
A lifetime, lifetimes would have died of grief.