1. Oh, how good is the company of books!
Love their days, oh love!

2. Oh, how delightful are the young children playing,
While the reins of life are loosened for them

3. As though they are the smiles of life
And breezes of its sweet-scented basil

4. They set out and return with it like travelers
At sunrise and sunset

5. To a pasture they are used to, not a strange one,
With a foreign shepherd, a stranger

6. And a future of life’s harsh restraints
Difficult for the soul and hard to endure

7. Chicks with a mother hen, including one rising up
To train its wing and one still too young

8. Their seats are on the wing of time
And they know not the danger of the ship

9. Sparrows at the start of class, skilled
Arabs in the playground

10. Free of life’s worries and burdens
Which they leave to their mother and father

11. The madness of modernity closes in around them
Cramping the breadth of doctrine

12. Except when it dominated the child’s mind
And exceeded even the teacher's reigns such that he poured out

13. They have a delightful bell that rings at school
But it is not delightful when compelled by force

14. When an hour passes with it for the people
The wheel of compulsion revolves

15. Brandishing its whip at the youth
And throwing poison into grey hair

16. Beating out its verdict with its two hammers
As fate spins in its cycle

17. And those tools in their hands
Are bags in which the hidden future lies

18. In them is he who if he succeeds is not considered one of the people
Or if he fails is not counted

19. In them are the banners, and in them the pulpits,
And in them the sale, and in them the prophets,

20. And in them the laggers behind the procession,
And in them the leaders in the parade

21. Fine upon them is the dress of youth
Before it is marred and made rigid

22. It clothed them in a garment
More precious than embroidered velvet

23. And more radiant than roses beneath the dew
When the tender branches wave

24. And purer than its trail that none touched, neither passerby nor pulled
A flock herded by a shepherd of the valleys,

25. Neither too gentle nor too firm
Its slopes roared with affluence

26. And it called out on the barren ridge
He marshalled his flocks arbitrarily

27. Fearing nothing and dreading naught
He let graze whoever he wished the fresh grass

28. And let descend wherever he liked to the fertile land
He watered those yearning for drink at his watering place

29. But the thirsty were not sated
He surrendered some necks to the executioner’s blade

30. And protected others, so they were not struck
He cares not for the pleasure of the cheerful

31. Nor the frustration of the complaining weary
He remains not with the present

32. Nor cries over the departed
Oh woe for them! Do they feel life?

33. They played, while it played not
It tries them out, though they know not

34. Like medical trials on a rabbit
It fed them a lethal poison that flowed through origins

35. And watered branches, but was not exhausted
Time revolved, so the young grew up past school days

36. And the youth labored and struggled through difficulty upon difficulty
The gentle days of their beginnings returned

37. As years of steady toil
Those seeking knowledge there were tortured by it

38. And choked on its sweetest spring
Life’s desires tossed them about, and love of fame and profit,

39. And a father’s pride in the son he begot
And his boasting over one not his own son

40. And a reason far from the goals of ambition
Like the highest mountain peak and ship’s captain

41. And desperate longing for what the minds of forebears never attained or sought
It passed like a star, appearing from one horizon

42. Traversing eras to the next horizon
Ancient in brilliance like the sun at noon

43. Yet new like its kindling lamp
Hippocrates is like Ibn Sina the leader

44. And Homer like Abu al-Tayyib
All of them stones in the building

45. And trees of the fertile, succeeding crop
It joins them in the shade of tranquility

46. And in the bosom of kinship most near
And it breaks in them the arrogance of wealth

47. And the conceit of birth and position
Unblemished houses like chastity

48. Though not veiled or hidden away
Their opulence approaches that of Mecca

49. And in purity that of Medina
When you see them thronging there

50. Like bees at the apiary
You see civilization in its fortress

51. There and in its triumphant army
They pass you in procession by procession

52. And you ask about the standard of each procession
Let fortune show in the morn who it chooses

53. For you cannot tell who it will single out
It adorned the earth with the genius

54. Taking the place of the planets in the sky
Yet the claw of time scratched the cheek

55. And blinked at their dazzling splendor
Modernity possessed the mind of the youth

56. Even if defiance ran through his grey hair
Grey hair proceeded smoldering in the heads

57. Like fire proceeding on kindling ground
A conflagration surrounding the thread of life

58. I wondered how oblivious they were to it
For whom does the fire show in his house

59. And crop—does it make them tremble?
They turned away after book knowledge

60. To a gate of knowledge that was not written down
A life in which a man raids

61. Armed with fang and claw
The son of the wealthy came to poverty

62. And the child of the destitute found wealth
The one indulged lost his health

63. While the sickly one recovered, did not perish
How many a father met life in the pursuit of education

64. But did not beget!
Friends disappeared as though they never existed

65. Though you had a pact with them and kept company
Until they perished group by group

66. Like mirages do over the desert