1. Is this Babylon that dazzles my eyes, or is it Egypt?
For I see eyes here that are sheer magic.

2. Sleepy-eyed charmers awakened desire with a glance,
And the fair and the dark submit to their bewitching.

3. No mind can find safety from their dominion,
Nor any heart concealment from their swooning.

4. If Moses once foiled magic, that was an age
Of miracles - but this is an age of magic.

5. What heart could fail to melt, flow down in drops,
At a languishing gaze that rains its sorcery?

6. A damsel over whom the moon's radiance trembles
And in whose tresses stirs a verdant bough,

7. Offers you the wine of dew in a snare -
A cleft-lipped one they call "Temptation's Lip."

8. The enchanters of Babylon bow down before her eyes
And reel drunken from the nectar of her spittle.

9. O queen of the tent that was guarded from strangers
By a darkness of lances now vanished into night!

10. Is there no reunion I can beg, to revive
A life made barren by the dearth of your presence?

11. I found the world's sum in your love, though aware
My craze for you was the best proof of my merit.

12. Think not my longing a jest. It is fire
Unquenchable, or less than unquenchable fire.

13. A passion, like the soul of heated steel. If my tears
Held back from feeding it, my breast would ignite.

14. When I come to the quarter, men's hearts fill with rage -
Hearts stuffed with perfidy, guile, and treason.

15. They think ill of me, though I merit it not;
For a man to think, lacking proof, is sin's burden.

16. What fault is it of theirs if a poet intones
A verse without flaw or defect?

17. Is it not natural for turtledoves to moan their love,
While the stallion, though cut, does not weep for himself?

18. What shame in a passion my brother poet's fervor
Betrayed in his verse that decency spurned?

19. So let no critic reproach me. For love, to the smitten,
Is always a valid defense.

20. Were love not nobler than censure, never would
Anyone pine for love or acknowledge its rights.

21. How bridle my heart with patience toward passion
When nothing of heart or of patience to me now pertains?

22. To tame my desire, I yield to its rule,
Though mine were the nays and the yea.

23. I am a man whose nature brooks insult reluctantly,
One apt to draw blood wherever swords clash.

24. No fledgling, I, to take umbrage at some trifle,
No coward to seek refuge behind my ramparts.

25. When I bare my blade for carnage, terror bolts
From its lair, though verse from my lips softly purls.