1. Ummayma, do not deny my fine garments and possessions,
For the youth has always been wrapped up with camels.

2. Ask the caravan leaders about my news,
It will inform you that I am the eye of the heroic warrior.

3. I do not drink water unless its source is clear,
Nor do I say to the crooked lover, "Unite with me!"

4. You impose on me to stay among you,
Yet the gleam of the sword does not show through cracks.

5. As long as the whites of eyes are still sheathed,
Nothing manifests itself to them in determination.

6. Moving around brings honor and elevation to the youth,
The full moon would not be complete without frequent movement.

7. While still moist, the date fruit is just firewood in its homelands,
But when traveling it can be bartered for a camel.

8. I would have cured you, striving hard, if your disease
Could be treated without eggs and honey.

9. But the more my advice increased, the more your disdain grew,
May God not bless an affection built on fraud!

10. You did wrong and assumed I have no sense
To taste the bitterness mixed into the honey.

11. If I refrain from the lute during your times of need,
The gaze of my eyes makes up for illnesses.

12. How much virtue have I planted in you
If only plants would fruit on barren mountains!

13. Do not think the distance of my house has saddened me,
Distance is more intimate than nearness built on fraud.

14. I have changed from you only the best change,
So now change from me the worst you can exchange!

15. The most wicked companion is one whose hours
Creep by - no good in a man who twists and turns!

16. Do not complain about one who does not spend his nights scheming against you
Or jeopardize your honor on a whim.

17. Your party will be weighed on the day of reckoning
As poems are weighed by proverbs.

18. When your speaker makes his most eloquent address
And is answered without undue brevity or length.

19. I enriched an era but no petitioner found fault in it,
I lacked wealth but did not plead or beg.

20. Every day it clothes you in its virtues
And glories, garments more splendid than splendid garb.

21. His sole concern has been to establish your glory,
He only wishes he had reached the zenith.

22. He humiliates in his affection those who do not love him,
And honors the impaired and infirm.

23. If you speak well one day, he says insolently,
"It didn't come from you," but if you speak nonsense, he is silent.

24. What harm to you, if you had kept your word? The noble,
When the ignoble fail their word through nature, not choice.

25. Have I not been truest to my vow to you,
And most forbearing of pacts, and most steadfast in duty and supererogation?

26. Is not the position of your house one of glory?
My house - whatever pride is because of me!

27. Am I not most open-handed in every honor,
And most burdened by grave events?

28. How much hypocrisy and ostentation is spent among you,
And you do not incline toward honest advice or rebuke!

29. If your dislike befalls my fortune, that is your right,
The nearest rose pricks deepest in the palm.

30. But if you devote yourselves to one of no merit,
Over me, a people has devoted itself to raving madness!

31. I hoped to repel the woes of adversity through you,
But alas! What disappointment from frustrated hopes!

32. I thought you were those by whom
My eye would be delighted, but I found you causes of my burning sorrow!

33. If my superiority over you diminishes, no wonder -
A blind man cannot grasp the rays of the sun.

34. Oh, would that I knew, though news has not yet ceased
To travel with the winds at dawn and nightfall:

35. Have my people come to rebuke me, they who,
If I aim an arrow, are not the target but the bowman?

36. That I have not returned to a watering-place in shame
Or on any day stood in an embarrassed stance?

37. I clothed my people and both seas in a garment of elevation
Remaining ever new like the lives of whale and penguin.

38. I have surpassed in excellence those who preceded me,
And my glory reached those born previously.

39. By that the leading exemplar of scholars,
Abu Bakr Muhyi al-Din bears witness to me.

40. He is the Imam whom all who stand guard over the world follow,
From every crescent-blade and new-gemmed scabbard.

41. No peer to him exists by whom he might be measured,
Can one compare the sea and the pit?

42. Yet some of his servants suffice - so what of him,
Well-mannered, neither rough nor wearied!

43. Not he alone has said this, but the best minds
Of Baghdad have testified to his perfection.

44. In poetry, none can boast favours equalling mine,
Even if he climbed to the height of the Great Bear!

45. Rather, the favour of the likes of me is to aspire through their ambition
Beyond praising the insignificant, busy with petty matters.