1. From you to you the paths of glory turn,
And hopes towards you incline and inferences make.

2. And many a revered one, whom honor sought,
Became submissive to your wills and stopped.

3. Where in the sea is there a bend from its bed?
Where in a star is there a swerve from its track?

4. Who contends with you in signs of honor?
While glory is born in you and takes from you its wraps.

5. Or who rivals you in precedence of generosity?
While lightning vies to glorify your munificence and your gifts.

6. Victory is your companion, war your suckling nurse,
The gleaming blade of power and domination your scabbard.

7. And praise and gratitude are divested of their cloaks
In your presence, and the outpourings of generosity clothe you.

8. The kingdom is your kingdom, departing yet expected,
Vanishing yet looked for, passing yet renewable.

9. Who reckons Qahtan among the sires of kings,
When the line of glory is recounted and traced?

10. Or who is like Amr and Imran and Tha'labah,
Hatim and Abu Thaur, each of tried repute?

11. Where is one like you, whose every knight
Is like a flashing star in the crown of the king's dominion?

12. Be they harsh or gentle, cut ties or join them,
Break faith or keep troth, fulfill or falsify.

13. Did they make peace the lands were as grateful showers;
Did they show wrath the lands felt their chargers' hooves.

14. Were they glad, the gloomy nights shone bright;
Did they frown, death lifted its skirts from those they doomed.

15. No slanderer could fault them for stinting generosity,
Or valor - save that they lavished without stint.

16. They who gave shelter, they who gave victory,
To the Message their Lord revealed, that they might know.

17. They who knit fast the ties the Faith had loosed,
When fancies failed and hearts were prone to doubt.

18. They who throttled the necks of greed, disdaining
To hoard, lavishing wealth without demand.

19. Rulers by God's command, victorious by God's aid,
Shakers of earth when mounted, charging to the fray.

20. For them in Paradise are castles built,
Decked and adorned, pure, and facing one another.

21. They are the loyal band God chose to pledge Him
Their lives, defending the House of God from sacrilege.

22. Then even if days without them seem gloomy,
The trusted Chamberlain rules, Guide Supreme is he.

23. The arrow of succession none shall bend
Save at its notch, or swerve from destiny's decree.

24. Steering its course is he who gives Mansur's reign
Enduring fame; from straightness it shall never stray.

25. That Chamberlain, whose rule is free of want,
Of all he promises or hopes for, none shall be denied.

26. A lofty soul that found its like and merged with it,
Congenial in its ways, and ways adjust themselves thereto.

27. It met on the field of awe, steeled 'gainst dismay,
While heroes bit the dust, and curtains fell away.

28. Ask Qabra and the dames who sheltered there
About his resolves; how they trembled and were sore afraid.

29. A troop, like the night's expanse, no end in sight
For him who strives to plumb its depths or penetrate its shades.

30. As though the sun, mid the confusion of their march,
Donned the night's cloaks, veiled in its darkest shades.

31. Its stars grew pale, its Pleiades lost their cluster;
The night shone bright from it; the dawn mantled by its shades.

32. The horses, gray-white of brow, surged onward
To race the lightning sparks, plunged in the foe's depths.

33. They spied the moves of the sly and cautious ones
Though darkness hid their plans from all but God and them.

34. Stalwart in their resolve, daring all, rushing in
Where death's tumultuous waves crashed mountain-high.

35. No tapping of white Indian steel disturbs their cool,
When flashing blades cross in the fray and wildly strike.

36. Though death bares its visage, dark before their eyes,
Patience retreats, and comrades waver and draw back.

37. Your troop by victory's light succeeded at the height of morn
While disbelief, its streams blocked, retired, cast down.

38. Good news: the Foe, its bastions crushed by your sword's might
- As justice owes - abased; the Faith exalted high!

39. You held its neck beneath the Yoke of Islam, judging it,
While, humbled and submissive, the two Harrs bowed and bent.

40. A foe deceived in plots, distraught,
Disgraced, afflicted, steeped in misery, misfortune-rent.

41. Swift swords slid smoothly through their necks, and it passed on
More penetrating than a sword through their vitals' depths.

42. So glory is entwined and sovereignty avenged,
Truth victorious, religion's cause upheld!

43. Among a horde whom encircling shame proclaimed
Evil dishonorable deeds they had designed and dangers dared.