1. With a grieving heart, I bid my dreams farewell
And glimpsed the nets of fate upon my path

2. I returned to the roses and bliss of youth
To walk where once they bloomed, on thorns and shards

3. Beside me, a sigh like a bereft lover’s moan
When the weeping one turned in sudden grief

4. Complaining of arms, when left devoid of ribs
Uncomplaining if summoned, no longer bereft

5. It troubled me that I folded up my bonds
After long entanglement and release

6. Woe to the son of my flank! Each pleasurable end
After youth is difficult to attain

7. Nothing of us remains, O heart, no residue
Of chivalry, nor any fight to recollect

8. When you would clap, we would race to passion’s call
And pull the deadly horde’s taut bowstrings

9. Today, when you shake me, you evoke in me
What the bell invokes in monks sequestered

10. O dweller of the valley, you have stirred me so
Phantom dreams return to memory

11. In remembrance I formed your love, and in illusion
As memories echo the telling years

12. And I passed by meadows, once a singing girl
Whose throat I circled with my braceleted arms

13. Her faces and eyes smiled at me, and in her breath
I found the scent of you, the draught of your wine

14. After that, I wandered days remembering
A butterfly between streams and fountains flying

15. Do you remember the racing of youth and passion
When they neared to kiss the hem of your gown?

16. I knew not the sweetness of embracing desire
Until my arms encircled your slender waist

17. And your supple sides nestled into my hands
As your reddened cheeks darkened in shyness

18. Entering gentleness – your tresses and the nightfall –
I kissed your radiant mouth like the dawning

19. And found in the essence of your wings a bliss
From your sweetness, and the smooth nectar of your lips

20. The language of words fell silent, and your eyes spoke
To mine in the idiom of passionate desire

21. I erased all coquetry from my mind
And forgot all reproach and contention

22. No past or future, just the days of your acceptance
Time gathered into one day of pleasure

23. Lebanon, the turns of fateful journeys
Have returned me to you from my pining

24. It gathered us two exiles on its ridge
A globe behind the celestial spheres

25. We walk upon it over all calamity
Like birds above the haunts of predators

26. And if longing brought me to your brilliant tomb
To rest my feet at your grave, my dear

27. Child of the plains, mother to its gently sloping hills
Sweet as apricot, dwell in your coldness

28. And Damascus is the garden of bliss
Yet I fancied the elite of Eden your peers

29. By heaven, if the streams and hills professed faith
Paradise would rejoice, then sleep by your side

30. Your mirror is its mirror, your eye its eye
Why, O Zahle, can your father not be mine?

31. Those vineyards are vestiges of Babylon
Alas! Babylon forgot your embraced one

32. You show, like the markings of a mare, the most beautiful
Coloring to all who look upon your sweetest life

33. Necklaces of musk, or braids of camphor
Were gathered into whiteness on your throat

34. When I saw water touch your chin, I pondered
The wine and milk of the gardens within

35. I have not forgotten from time's gift an evening
That passed in your shade and ended at your threshold

36. You were the bride upon the winged litter
As Lebanon carried your precious self

37. The moment walks to you in brocade or ivory
From whatever mountain pass leading to your abode

38. Nature embraced the pine and oak in tenderness
To shelter and cradle you in their arms

39. The full moon in the heavens' fabric sprinkled
Its ornaments upon the soil and you alike

40. The lamps of stars gaze down from clouds
Like hands parting veils and latticework

41. Each towering tree like a nebula
Or a wall constructed of immense bricks

42. The regions of night grew still, but for
A vibration in the boughs, or a wakeful string’s refrain

43. Glory, O cedar bride, to you above all else
Under the sky, from the realms your ransom

44. Eloquence planted its banner in your earth
And the kings of verse walked in your valleys

45. Your genius minds are brilliant stars – I see
No ground as fertile for stars as you

46. He whose knowledge peaks in his poetry
And he guards his nature with principles

47. Who gathers odes from your hills, and perhaps
Steals the features from the breeze of your youth

48. Moses at your door in generosity and sublimity
His staff for wonders of rhetoric your staff

49. You extracted my poetry’s nobleness from yourself
And gathered it by the dictation of angels

50. If you honor, O Venus, my verse, then I
Have rejected every poem but you

51. You are the imagination – its innovations and marvels
God crafted you, and time narrated you