1. Poetry has in time an authority that nothing alters,
Not what events bring of destruction and change.

2. It elevates some folk and others are debased by it,
Like time itself flowing with ease and hardship.

3. It has everlasting marvels that march on unceasing
Through the earth amid darkness and illumination.

4. From every vanished encampment it gleans in the open
To steal away men's breaths in their settlements.

5. It runs with the sun in a current like flickering light
On a frame made of rays filled with radiance.

6. It chases the lightning should it pass by and leaves it
In boiling foam of the churned-up sea.

7. Pages that voices still chant in each circle of time
That is lived in: for poetry every clan has renown.

8. With it each chief of repute takes pride in his manor
And every debased one fears its reproof.

9. How many a kingdom's pillars it made firm stand
And how many an overweening one's breath it extinguished.

10. Poetry is the register of the mores wherein the mind
Has inscribed all it pondered and picked out.

11. How much glory it builds up and how much shame it brings down,
Exalting and abasing with hopes and terrors.

12. Zuhayr eternized himself with what an old man built up
Of news turned legend repeated and broadcast.

13. And Jarwal by it came to ruin when he cast
Aspersions that left him broken beyond repair.

14. Al-Nābigha disgraced Ḥayy of al-Numayr with it, so they
Spoke of nothing else repeated from him far and wide.

15. Had glorious Abū Nuwās never spoken his splendid lines,
In time his name would not once have been mentioned.