1. My tears flowed when I saw their ruins,
So it quenched my thirst as it moistened the sands.

2. I recognized the traces of some, while others
Were erased by the north wind when it blew.

3. Homes of gazelles have become shacks,
Yet the fawns do not cease to return to them.

4. And where are their gazelles compared to human company
That would grieve being called a fawn?

5. Among the generous Arabs was an honorable tribe
Whose tents were pitched between us.

6. We trusted them in monotheism when
We saw Bilal above their tents.

7. I was troubled for a group who in war
Broke my heart when they loaded their camels.

8. And my patience found leaving hard
The morning after they departed.

9. We stood at the site of the abode praying
But who would answer our call?

10. Our tears flowed in circles
Until their ebb became Meem and Daal.

11. We repeat between these ruins,
The yearning of she-camels when they saw the departure.

12. And we faced from its storms dust
That we mistook for the beauty of faces.

13. Whenever the pigeons cooed, my heart was struck
As if their throats were adorned with arrows.

14. And I remember hands decorated
With the bracelets of righteousness worn by men.

15. Hands whose generous owner
Distributes favors continuously.

16. If I said, “the clouds are like his palms,”
I would compare the crescent to the sun.

17. A man who spends his wealth freely,
Even if mountains were made his money.

18. Guests increase the joy in his face
Like the whetstone expands the sword’s blade.

19. A generous man who waged war on wealth,
And it mattered not whether he had it or struggled over it.

20. He bought praise among people with wealth,
While the Lord of Praise is He who bestowed the bounty.

21. Wealth is like a sword that reveals to us
The qualities of its owner.

22. The despicable earns humiliation with it,
While the generous earns glory.

23. We knew Al-Qasim Adh-Dhuree to be a man
Whose generosity we imagined.

24. He attains the blood of knights in battle
But does not take spoils of war.

25. The fiercest of people in wars,
Yet the best of them in all conditions.

26. The most eloquent speaker of any saying,
And the most successful doer of any deed.

27. His generosity takes delegations by surprise,
A man who knows not war knows not ambush.

28. So the people do not wait for a promise,
Nor complain of a delayed promise.

29. A man who refines swords in the fires of war,
That were they not quenched with blood, would melt.

30. And iron takes pride in his grip
Over precious stones, however much it presumed.

31. When swords protected the homes of a people,
Some of the people protected the swords.

32. But swords are useless without hands
That make them fitting examples.

33. His enviers undertook a path for him
But it increased their misguidance.

34. By your life, forgiveness cannot be a dowry,
Even if purity were his slippers!

35. We visited him with poetry at his encampment,
Trying to match him, but we fell short.

36. When our poems passed by a plateau,
It showed us its mighty mountains.