1. O home, you have made the sky your pillar
And made the stars your beautiful dwellers

2. You have gathered good fortune, so goodness
Became in you, the home of religion and worldliness

3. Time lingered in your precincts sending
From early affection, more and more affection

4. And if people are bound in affection
None who envied or hated could get any of it

5. And I see knowledge like worship, in its
Highest aims, coming closest to God

6. With a vast plain, it sends the mind therein
Everyone who doubted for an hour or harbored misgivings

7. Shall we ask Abu Al-Ala, though he closed
An eye in the world of existence and forgot

8. How can the Creator of birds be ridiculed by one
Who knows not a bird, whether it wept or sang?

9. You are like the sun fluttering, and the Milky Way
A porch, and like the galaxy a platter

10. If you were veiled, you would be like the Hidden Kaaba
A train of glory and felicity

11. If there is a home for reward and righteousness
You are for truth and guidance, a place of yearning

12. You have reached perfection in half a century
How if completeness of beauty lasted a century?

13. Count not the years if knowledge is mentioned
For you know no old age for knowledge

14. Nights will perish in your precincts
While it remains through the ages, not perishing

15. O Ukaz, harboring youths, eloquent
Qurashis in assemblies, our tongues

16. They spread them as light from God's bounty
From darkness, over inner eyes that squinted

17. They taught rhetorically, neither strangers
Among them one day, nor foreigners our convention

18. Virtuous youth who disappointed neither
Hope of reward, nor teacher, of his supposition

19. They clove darkness over the countryside that descended
And illuminated the plain, desert and settled

20. When one passed away, his ideas dispersed
In the minds of youth, or divided minds

21. Call the House of Knowledge, O Aisha
If you wish, or call it O Sakina

22. Tell it: O daughter of the Blessed, blessings
Have flowed through you, as befits its name

23. He is, at the festival, alive, a martyr
Witnessing his excellence’s wedding, how excellent!

24. At the wedding, whether he appears or doesn’t
The bride’s father is exalted and fêted

25. The mention of him in your club stopped
Tears in their flow, and turned them

26. Many a goodness I was filled with gladness
When the good were remembered, and I was saddened

27. I know, when it was built, it was built
Above the enemy’s nose, as a fortress

28. The state’s wall, if you wish, is built with schools
Or, if you wish, with fortresses built

29. See the people! Do you see any meaning
To a life whose radiance is neglected?

30. Neither wealth in men averted excelling
And its rule, nor status made them needless

31. Many a wretch in the land, the land did not
Make for him, whether he stayed or traveled, any weight

32. He lived, you did not pelt him with a glance
And he perished, you lent no ear to his obit man

33. God composed His dominion with servants
Intellectuals who inherited grace seemly

34. Glories distracted them from enviers
For only the great are envied and protected

35. The perspicacious bequeath knowledge
Or the ingenious create art

36. Many an antique, like a rare artifact
Was not diminished by the new, its value

37. And new, over which time differs
And ages pass, century after century

38. So preserve both treasures
The prudent are concerned with treasures

39. O youths who gave me pure affection
And gave my detractor over malice, protection

40. Whenever my hair grew white with age
They recited it, and it grew lush again

41. The poet’s family, the reciters—and he
Is not indifferent—man is bound to the near

42. They are stingy with life in what I said
And twist in death more miserly

43. When they are done with him and ready him
No brother of reciters or a son remained

44. Rise to excellence! Rise! Until you raise
The banner of knowledge like the crescent high

45. We are in semblance of kingdoms unless
Knowledge and teacher become one of us

46. Call not the citadels and ships, but call
Knowledge, to build citadels and ships for you

47. The caravan of civilization has penetrated
The land and cloven the sky, wind and havens

48. And we followed it like dust, no men
Held its reins, nor riders controlled its stampede

49. Our forefathers tamed time, obsequious
And obsequious to the events of fate, obedient

50. How we boast of a dead man’s tomb, how we carry
From a destroyer, and none of us builds

51. The time has come to say, we, and not to hear
Our children say: we were