1. You still rise high though your enviers are dejected,
Or fate reaches what it decrees.

2. If what you have attained today stuns them,
It is less than what you hope for and await.

3. You ascend levels where others before you faltered,
While you kept rising through the ranks.

4. If the bright stars are not your brethren,
You are, beside them, an eminent neighbor.

5. Majesty has passed from your deeds to you,
So it is no wonder if you are distinguished by the best of them.

6. Let whoever is obsessed with it angrily suppose
That excellence is a thing that can be seized by force!

7. For beyond achievements are hardships
Wherein hardship, not success or boldness, is found.

8. When the Almighty King chose you as a protector,
He loved you, selecting you from among them.

9. The love of Him who gives the world entire,
Yet encounters no vain ingrate among what He gives.

10. Ever since the Imam of the Age summoned you as his reinforcement,
Misfortunes have turned tail and fled.

11. His word that you are my reinforcement is no title,
Though some ignorant fool supposes it a surname.

12. Have any well-watered gardens ever been adorned
As your qualities are adorned in books?

13. The greatest books have come to you, extolling
Merits no books have gained.

14. Your praise has exalted you beyond what clothes
Embroidered with gold have exalted you.

15. These grow worthless with use after a time,
While the others remain, like long roots, firm.

16. When the sky was too narrow for your army at dawn,
You scattered in the air a host that has no peer.

17. Never before your day did we see a sky
With predators and lions accompanying each other in its expanse!

18. Dark rain clouds loom, displaying their lightning,
Always pouring, never knowing drought.

19. Sublime ones with silver spears
And reddish lions' manes wave above them.

20. When you marched, four does shaded you,
The gazelle's heart revering them.

21. The nearest to you exalts she
Whose surahs in Qur’an and sermons are sublime.

22. She reached toward the Bow's abode and grasped
Some of it, while fresh water flows from some.

23. She helps herself to water without bubbles
And takes shade under a fire without flames.

24. If she appears, rising in the black night,
You and your two sons are the seven planets.

25. As if the Pleiades poured forth a sea from which
The mantles, coronets, domes, and cloaks scooped.

26. Each bygone thing the passing days yield
Is safe from its sharpness and harm.

27. When a clamor passes over its essence,
Horses are in dire straits, their wine atop them.

28. You entrusted leadership to them knowingly,
You of hearts that fear never pierced.

29. Each day you pour them into deadly perils
Before the least bit of plunder is carried off.

30. Though you entrusted it to them while it drips blood,
It is their foes' blood that dyes it.

31. Through this office you have attained a rank
Whose trials are yours, while others enjoy its fruits.

32. When kings incline toward vain pleasures,
Foolishness infringes on their deeds.

33. You will remain busy vanquishing wrongs,
Unconcerned by what wrong and evil invite you to.

34. If you grow angry at the disobedience of the wicked,
You have been pleased with the rule of kindness when they rage.

35. In a state that, thanks to you, attained its aspirations—
Against those who rebel, their own compatriots rebel.

36. You are its proud one, your sons its protectors,
Its victory, while you own the valiant wrath.

37. If they gain loftiness in their exile,
Musk increases in price when it travels afar.

38. Let no eminent man covet their place,
For the orbiting sphere cannot be clutched.

39. The repeller of afflictions, when clouds are stingy,
The dispeller of sorrows, when branches are scarce,

40. O Banū Abī Ṣaliḥ, esteem for you remains
Since you were revered and reverence.

41. Are you not a folk whose goodness, when distant, wanes,
And evil, when near, stays away?

42. When their faces are unveiled by the Pleiades,
What a shining appears that has no equal!

43. You were blessed, so the discourse describing you
Is often repeated throughout the ages.

44. While your panegyrists crowd thick around your doors,
For your enviers' words against a praiser: no way!

45. The emirate is ennobled when you represent it,
Just as Tamīm b. Murr gains esteem when affiliated.

46. After God's Messenger's house, no abode has boasted
The likes of yours, neither non-Arab nor Arab.

47. A house with power for land, glory for heaven,
The "Severer" stars for columns, and dew for perfume.

48. A conquest over glory and loftiness in every fray
Has protected it from the evils of enemies.

49. When they refused the pregnancy of hybrids,
Their cattle spent the night being milked by them.

50. If you boast of your inherited nobility,
Man is not ennobled by pure lineage or upbringing.

51. As for Damascus—you had helped it before
When its supporters vanished.

52. They vanished by capture, killing, and retaking of foes
While you alone there held your ground.

53. You defended it with a ruler's defense—
Did you expect such a time as yours?

54. You were farthest of God's creation from any rift
When swords and lances were parted.

55. How often you plunged into raging fires
That none with doubts about himself could dare!

56. How often you spoke impromptu judgments
While the innocent and culprits kept company!

57. Thus from your eloquence the water of virtue pours,
And from your beneficence, the water of kindness floods.

58. If glory can be won among nations,
Yours is inborn and won.

59. You have oppressed, so the greatest conquerors
Deemed meager what they vanquished.

60. You have spent freely, so the greatest benefactors
Deemed paltry what they gave.

61. Kind deeds that make the saddlebags feel pity
For the camel litters—they cannot be counted.

62. You have turned your Qaṣr al-ʿĀfiyūn into their dwelling
When some of their caravans depart, others come.

63. When the expenses of those who come to you fall short,
You drink what they proffer or deny.

64. When cups of praise come to you overflowing,
Choice drafts of it don’t reach them.

65. You have ennobled a soul, so you choose what is best for it;
Wealth therefore seems contemptible, praise coveted.

66. You store up none of what you earn
Except as clouds store up their water.

67. The aid you gave the Muslims allowed them to savor
A cure that leaves no malady uncured.

68. So may the sultanate of the Caliph's crown endure forever,
And may all creatures' fears and desires cease!

69. A hand that denies due to its power is a sanctuary,
Just as one that acts freely in giving is a bouquet.

70. Its volition, like the courser's charge, cannot be stopped,
Its gifts, like the lion's den, cannot be breached.

71. So the days' vicissitudes do not come raiding
A populace you have relieved of worries.

72. Misfortune has never touched you in auspicious times,
Doubts vanishing from your heart as it rises.

73. How, when his nature disposes him to fast,
His face being like the crescent moon awaited?

74. My upbringing in your shadow never swerved,
Nor have I severed it though I'm drawn from you.

75. Rather, I wanted to notify one stretching out a hand
That your hand is full even when the stream runs dry.

76. A kindness that escapes my hopes to overtake it—
Thanks be to God that escape does not embarrass me!

77. If I exhausted my life praising you,
I could not fulfill a tenth of what is owed.

78. So every puller of beauty's reins is led
To ransom what lacks cause with caused bounty.

79. To turn aside the days' caprices that subdue me,
I cling to a rope that cannot be severed.

80. And I am certain, from old, that my death
Will come though no fleeting shadow pierced it.

81. So behold one aloof from greed, yet tied to the earth,
Upright, though the land makes him slip.

82. To Muṣʿab, whom honor contents and protects,
Not water or grass, but the opponent proves helpless!

83. When I want an openhanded man to relax,
I let loose a gentle wind—not grapes.

84. I have no regard for the praise I utter
Even if my love and propriety select it.

85. A flawless doer's work matches his flawless words;
Deception cleaves not to the former as it does to the latter.