1. The distant land drew near for you,
Was it horses or lightening flashes?

2. Is one who adorns horses with ornaments
Like one who makes the thorns their fodder?

3. They marched slowly, the darkness dissolving,
In the finest garb with which dawn clothes the daybreak;

4. Their tracks left smoke behind like a simmering fire,
And the horses’ teeth flashed with the sparks struck from steels;

5. The winds competing to ensure victory,
Returned bearing booty back from there;

6. No ruler has the right to dignity and power
Unless he recovers what rights have been lost;

7. You hastened resolutely and purposefully,
And the pride of the sword is to be wrapped in its scabbard;

8. You were victorious and gained more than others,
Is it not time to establish a market for the plunder?

9. The clan of Tayyi’ suffered a terrible onslaught
Their robes and forearms were taken as booty;

10. You pelted them with a resolve that, had it rivaled
The firmness of a dam, would have breached it;

11. And a resolute, triumphant spirit that cast upon them
Agonizing separation, so they met with misery;

12. They thought your resolve a tearful weakling
Yet for them, when the time came, it was a deep sea;

13. Their lions roared, but when you approached
Their roaring turned at once into wheezing;

14. They fled from their homes in terror
While you protected those whom they abandoned;

15. Had you not reined in your army from them
They would have been led off with the captives in the morning;

16. So you restored the infants to the mothers
And multiplied the precious little ones;

17. Had you not wisely resolved to show clemency
You would have left them naught but carnage;

18. Their spear-thrusts were repelled to places that left
No refuge for them, so that the people were undone;

19. Like spears that pierce with purpose so as to determine
The fate of the intoxicated gone astray to awaken;

20. As if swaying drunkenly, though they were taken down,
Were they given to drink until sated, or a narcotic?

21. You attacked by day with what they hated,
Disdaining to meet them by night with raids;

22. If holding fast seemed an enemy,
They found fleeing a true friend;

23. They mentioned you at Jerash with rancor—
An affliction that tested you—yet you pardoned graciously;

24. Their pigeons took off faster than those doves only
As faster than a pigeon is the arrowhead;

25. Had they remained for a time in the pastures
Or ascertained the trusted news of what transpired,

26. You would have made the pebbles of their lands carnelian
With what was shed there, and the soil a true killing;

27. Is there any in their lands left but a group
That tells of what befell their other group?

28. You came to exact a clear right,
So their falsehood there perished, declined;

29. A protector refused to be found lacking, wanting,
Anything but vengeance and conquest when they insisted on vice;

30. If after this they take another path,
Then they have come to know the way to ruin;

31. And if they persist in villainy—but how could that be?—
Then their blood has come to know mortification;

32. You refused anything but the harvest of glory,
While others gained spoils and flocks;

33. Upon them you loosed calamities that left
Each one's heart quivering and pounding;

34. The shepherd of beasts will forget the howl, not the bleating,
Yet the shepherd of sheep will forget the bleat, not the howl;

35. If you left their patience captive,
Then you left their terror free;

36. You vie with them whenever they take to the open country,
So what chance have they if they take a narrow pass?

37. And if God's land shrinks from the space their corpses require,
Your pardoning them would never shrink;

38. Indeed, if you denied fate something,
It would find itself prohibited, constrained;

39. Whenever a high goal eluded your grasp,
You eternally strove to outpace it;

40. I see the name of king shared in common,
Yet none but you suits its meaning;

41. How often you surpassed in pursuing great deeds
A path where you found no companion;

42. So one whose breast expands with vaster breadth
As the days constrict the breast of fate!

43. Your law killed souls of a people—
When did they begrudge it?—they were thankless, rebellious;

44. You made bettering their situation a daily concern,
Your pardon for the wrongdoers a constant practice;

45. Indeed, were time itself to suffer what you endure,
It could not have been patient or borne it;

46. May God perpetuate days of bliss
In the shade of which life is comfortable and elegant;

47. And may God increase the worth of my father ‘Ali,
Though enemies spurn him contemptuously;

48. For malice aims only for mischief,
Nor does hatred intend but to ruin;

49. So may he remain a brother, precious,
And you for him a devoted, kindly father;

50. I saw you as a cultivated palm tree, with branches spreading,
A beautiful growth, roots sound and thriving;

51. So praise is detained for you, since truly
I found you well-versed, deeply rooted in it;

52. The envious were enraged to their souls’ torment,
So ceaseless agony visited those warped minds;

53. Your lands were not deprived of support
That ordained you should triumph and surpass;