1. Stand in awe at the pyramids' grandeur and call out,
Is there among your daughters an assembly or a tryst?

2. We complain and take refuge between their eyes,
For fatherhood is the refuge of children.

3. We scatter them according to passion's whims with their inheritance,
From every harbinger of passion with a guide.

4. And we show how the brethren scattered during
The time of affliction, the scattering of opposites.

5. Verily the sophist in reality himself
Is an aggressor upon the weak soul.

6. Say to the three wonders a saying
From a caller in their place, urging on

7. To God you are, so I have not seen upon Al-Safa
This majesty, nor upon the pegs.

8. You have, like places of worship, a holy awe
And upon you is the spirituality of worshippers.

9. You were established with their dreams as foundations
And erected from their morals as columns.

10. Those sands beside you are a remainder
Of blessing, generosity, and ashes.

11. If we have honored the guest facing them
Then the guest with you is where munificence lies.

12. That trustee circling your walls,
Advancing the pilgrims and the seekers.

13. If eternity promises him from you, his poetry
Remains, and its rhetoric is not for exhausting.

14. O trustee! You have touched all that is veiled
In beauty, of the intellect's effects and beginnings.

15. Rise! Kiss the stones and the hands which
Took a covenant from them of eternity.

16. And take genius from the treasures, it is
The cradle of suns and the horizon of intentions.

17. Mother of cities! If you are not the mother of cities
And the refuge of notables and individuals,

18. The east is still covered in glimmers from it
In every darkness, a guiding ray.

19. They raised basil to you, good smelling as your name,
Construction is truly the greeting of glories.

20. And they chose for the festival its place
And I made the place of celebration my heart.

21. Eras have passed over the affection between us,
Years of sobriety, nay years of slumber.

22. And if you gather goodness, you return it
To aged wine or old affection.

23. O star of Syria! And you are not the first,
What grew from brilliance and leaders?

24. I look to Yemen with your good fortune tomorrow
And your image appears after tomorrow in Baghdad.

25. And I imagine your specter in the heights of kingdoms,
From what you travel and in the features of countries.

26. And ask the graves, no I say ask the towns,
Is there someone from Rabī‘ah present or traveling?

27. You will see the abodes in the diversity of their affairs,
The camel has spoken of them and the guide comprehended.

28. You spent the days of youth in a world
That old age wore the gray hair of the cold.

29. It gave birth to all wonders and marvels
And promised it would give birth to eloquence repeatedly.

30. No devil of Ḥassān was invented, nor
Did its factories produce the tongue of Ziyād.

31. God honored a group with eloquence
Precious in birth in the two worlds.

32. Homer, generations after him,
Created poetry, though it was not without peers.

33. And poetry, where souls find it sweet,
Not in the new or the habitual old.

34. The right of your family in your genius is first,
So see, perhaps you are dissipating the family.

35. Half of genius was not enough for them, so give them more
If you are not, with both halves, ungenerous.

36. Or leave your tongue and languages, for perhaps
The noble sang with the logic of ancestors.

37. Verily the one who filled languages with beauties
Made beauty and its secret in the letter ‘d’.