1. Ransomed are the robes and cloaks made of fur,
Of no use are the horse’s adornment and decor.

2. In Arabs the clothes beautify the wearer,
If clothes beautify, it is in settled abode.

3. Sweeter than the melody of strings in a bower,
Is a verse of poetry in a book of poetry.

4. Above the scent of burning aloes-wood
Is the smoke’s scent from villages watered with blood of victims.

5. If you want the roe-deer of pure breed, entrust
To it the musk-pods, and seek it in the desert.

6. Among the wild beasts are those which have distracted
His heart from the roe-deer of humanity and civilization.

7. The black-eyed gazelle with no coquetry,
Without kohl in whose eyes kohl has no effect.

8. Beautiful is she whose charms are
From God’s workmanship, not man’s artifice.

9. Of my friends I remember not one,
Nor a halt to the right of the tribe of Mudar.

10. We halted on the soft sands thinking them
A sea surging with cattle and men.

11. The youths spend the day vying in shooting
From horseback, and the night reveling.

12. One of us recites from al-Kundi a tale,
And we relate to him one from our Shaikh al-Umari.

13. O people, learn his transcendent poems well,
And beware, O sober one, of the perils of intoxication,

14. For in them is healing and companionship, he who is
Among you sick or travelling can profit from them.

15. Ease, comfort, joyance, and fragrant zephyr
Blowing with the morning breeze of daybreak.

16. It stops the riding-camels from seeking water, thirsting,
Its chanting makes rose-blossoms seem in the breasts.

17. The pole of Iraq whose fame in Syria
Reached the Hijaz, and the lands of Persia and Khazar,

18. If the face of the earth is far from a moon,
No land is far from the largesse of the moon.

19. His lofty epistles showed his merit,
When they came, and we knew the tree by its fruit.

20. I was satisfied with him from afar in his absence,
And effort makes the distant near through report.

21. Often a phantom visited me and frequented me
In sleep, until he cast me into wakefulness.

22. I spend the night in a garden of the delights of seeing him
While my eye and heart burn in hellfire of passions.

23. Between me and my loved ones are mountains and valleys,
And the like of that to me are my Murstibari friends.

24. The wind betrays me in conveying my greetings,
And conceals from me the truthful news.

25. I commend to God a spirit sincere in love,
Beyond attainment, by God's ordainment and decree.

26. Each day from those I love my hearing longs,
Hearing is one thing, seeing another.

27. Woe to him, from a time whose circuits
Bring me nightly only peril and alarm.

28. An age devoid of probity in its turbidness,
And if clear an hour, not devoid of cloudiness.

29. He will not stand by a pledge to one he trusts,
Nor stand firm in a tie to one connected to him.

30. When we meet, separation is our lot,
Like the bow bringing together arrow and string.