1. Your fortunes follow you through the ages with success,
Opening into a festival, a festival opening into triumph,

2. As lightning heralds the rain, dawn discloses the sun,
And morning’s breeze disperses the darkness.

3. By the abundant rain Islam thrives anew,
Through you, O reviver of religion and guidance!

4. Its gleaming banners in the infidels’ darkness
Are like the wings the Yemen’s birds spread in exultation.

5. It sails on every tumultuous sea
With glorifiers praising the name of its Lord.

6. In the fray, amidst the havoc of war,
The heroes are reminded of Bilqis in her lofty palace,

7. While your sword serves the necks and markets,
Like Solomon’s blade enforcing God’s writ,

8. Flashing in the battle’s heat a deadly stroke
That cleaves the devil’s liver with a gaping wound.

9. In black night’s wings you made it shine at dawn,
Dispelling the night of sorrow brooding low.

10. What mother of unbelief have you not vanquished
Striking her sons, victorious, in the highlands?

11. How many infidels’ nests were laid waste
By your blows, when hands proffered nothing!

12. You ignored equals, though faces paraded their charms,
Grew deaf to suitors, though they rode high.

13. Soon you displayed them, marching to war unfurled,
As beauties who rise to make dawn glow,

14. Canopied by banners as though they were gazelles
Grazing freely in a meadow’s shade.

15. Not houris, but planets whose brilliance
You eclipsed with the sword and spear’s ray.

16. Their eyes in return rain down upon us from your arrows
Love’s shafts, which promise union and peace.

17. They reveal, beneath the blood their swords shed,
Beauty’s essence, all grace and loveliness.

18. This mother of unbelief, after her routing,
Is darkness without stars, night without dawn.

19. Clad in glory’s raiment, you left her
Huddled in rags, vile, scorned, abased,

20. Weeping for the nobles whose lives your blades took—
Swords that rent beauty and wit asunder.

21. Every mourning woman casting her eye
Toward the horizon hears only, “Begone!”

22. And every aborted nest of sedition
Will be left, thanks to you, wrecked shells.

23. Consider the swelling poison you quenched
At every spring, curing thirst’s burning pangs,

24. Though opened away from its source, the Nile
Denied it, the lion baring its deadly fangs.

25. What guide led you to each watering place?
To what goal did you march each army?

26. They are homeless throngs no shower can succor,
Parched men the dew’s sprinkling cannot revive.