1. Does he who has sadness like Jacob's
Hope for Job's patience from Joseph's beauty?

2. How can there be patience without a heart to uphold it?
For the heart of every lover is with the beloved.

3. Time has passed fickly over the people of passion
So they neither stopped nor attained what they sought

4. Their souls find pleasure in the darkness
On the promise of imagination, forgetting the promise of the Pleiades

5. The beauty of my cheek that I gained
Is devoid of any bitterness in its sweetness

6. Adorned with kohl above the veil, no kohl
Below the ornaments, and embroidery on the robes

7. Veiled under covers, hidden by them
And her light like pearls not veiled

8. I knew a bride was concealed in her litter
When I smelled the fragrance of perfume from her

9. A gift her sender generously gave me
As the thirst of the brilliant one is given a drop from the clouds

10. She came at an unexpected time on her visit
And the sweetest delegation is one unexpected

11. Noble, from the noble whose side is inaccessible
Oh, the writer from him is well composed!

12. He praised me beyond what I can thank him for
So I cast to him the excuse of the overpowered

13. Greetings to the morning, the land of Egypt and those in it
And its generosity like the downpours of rain

14. In its land is the forest of knowledge that permitted
Others its scraps and pipelines

15. Peace be upon the Friend as the angels
Of the throne read above the pulpits

16. And who can we have peace with to meet him with it
And the coolness of passion like that blazing firebrand?

17. He is the writer whose traits have softened
And whom God protected from blame and rebuke

18. Aloof from the superfluities of speech, his diction
In prose and verse is of accepted styles

19. And the best poetry is that whose springs
Fulfill the right of refinement and education

20. And he who stood guard over its words
Like protectors over the racehorses' reins

21. And he who, if there comes a trial among people
Suffices him against piercing a soul in trials

22. To you O son of Suraj ad-Din has come
A girl seeking illumination for the Bedouins

23. A flirt in the howdah of the camel litter, idle,
She has extended to you her fingers not dyed with henna

24. You raised my worth with praise, for which I lowered
My head, so my hearing regarded it attentively

25. I owe you gratitude which I will fulfill
O you whom my praise is not obligated to