1. I know not how to eulogize one
Who became immortal despite death

2. Remaining in his works more enduring
Than the pyramids, a glorious, eloquent witness

3. Time crept up to destroy him, but retreated disappointed
Looking on, furious and spiteful

4. It could not touch him, even if it stilled him
For the sea remains a bountiful or placid sea

5. Shawqi, how can I mourn him on his day of eternity
When the sword seeks a brandisher, not a sheath

6. Let me sing of genius, for it is
Like the sun - when it sets, it leaves a twilight

7. Or a flame that flashed and lit up the horizon
Guiding an oppressed brother and returning a stray

8. Generations gestate storms within them
Until the unknown sends forth one of its own

9. Like the sea, it rarely casts up its pearls
And you see it tossing refuse upon the shore

10. So if God wills the renaissance of a nation
He guides genius to it as a leader

11. Shawqi, you were a divine message
That coursed through the ears of time chanting verses

12. A soul from Generous God and a mercy
With which He revived the dead and awakened the prostrate

13. You mastered poetry in all its forms
In every valley you roamed, you were rightly guided

14. Of the old, you grasped the essence
And from the new, you extracted insightful tableaux

15. You raised the Arabic language in Egypt to a kingdom
It saw within you a rising star

16. You crowned Egypt and buttressed the throne of its pride
And adorned the neck of Damascus with necklaces

17. For the Arabs and Islam in their sorrows
You were the eloquent tongue and helping hand

18. Your rhetoric united their various passions
And led from lethargy to awareness as guide

19. No grave calamity disturbed Islam
Without you rising in consolation or defence

20. "You called people to noble character; and the worst"
Destruction upon us was the work of the corrupt

21. Among us there remain those who conspire against their people
How much backbiting and plotting can we bear?

22. How many stands you took in Damascus and its people
Rousing the vigilant and awakening the sleeping

23. You sang it a melody brimming with youth
In which the branches swayed, keeping time

24. You shared in its sorrows and joys
O you who saw a son sharing with his father!

25. In the Umayyad Mosque you stood, magnifying
And recalled the glory of Umayya's descendants in prayer

26. You left your tears flowing in Az-Zahraa
And your heart ardently burning in Al-Faihaa

27. You consoled Jallaq in its great calamity
And defended it with eloquent resistance

28. You sent up souls consumed with tears
On its day of tribulation, so they were like poems

29. Would that the gardens became infernos from them
And the abodes of bliss overnight mass graves

30. They made the palaces' resting places, and those within
Into prey for the flames in the dead of night

31. The black-faced swept through them, imagining themselves
Among the masses like scorpions and serpents

32. Worse still were the early tyrants
Who almost made life for it tranquil and stable

33. From each slave of the oppressors and their party
You see in him a raging devil

34. What pleasures its life would have
Had they not poisoned its springs and courses!

35. Alas! It will not forget your deeds
For it has made its nightingales tongues in praise

36. And now let my eyelids pour with their sorrows
For tears weigh heaviest when withheld

37. Leave the grieving to vent some of their complaints
For the heart recoils, congested with anxieties

38. But I fear the outpouring of anguish upon you
Shows glowing embers upon your sides

39. So restrain a bursting heart, appease its torment
Buckle down, steel a liver, and bravely endure

40. O you who called yesterday for fleeting sleep
Can you call today for lasting patience?

41. Two calamities have pierced the Arabs' heart
A bleeding wound and a well-aimed arrow

42. Their tears for Hafiz did not dry
Before the day of Shawqi arrived

43. I cannot forget the women's assembly eulogizing
Shawqi, remaining flooded with grief

44. The gentlewomen and maidens wailed
And from their tears scattered elegies

45. They pained my heart and reddened my tears
And left my eyelids awake to the tragedy

46. The secret of life eludes the mind's grasp
The wise remained baffled, falling silent

47. Were it not for the gardens of poetry in the desert
Your life would have been hardship and woes

48. However you approached the instruments of life
You saw one lying in wait for you

49. A person in his world is a stray bird
Fleeing from one hunter only to meet another

50. Abandon analyzing the truth, for it
Leaves one detached from all things

51. But listen to fancy's revelation
Without which life would be frigid and meaningless

52. And if you weep for a person, then weep for one
Who mastered eloquence, prolific and creative