1. Slow down some of your wailing, oh dove
I find you neither sleep nor rest

2. Always remembering and lamenting
Has your yearning and passion not ended?

3. You cried out to me in longing, so tell me
Are you a dove or a pigeon in love?

4. Gently, your neighbor is lovesick
And anxious, pained by words

5. Do you remember one perished since Noah’s time
When life then was but a lad

6. And I forget my intimacy and pact with you
Recent, not a year has passed

7. You recovered and didn’t suffer loss of a friend
So excellent is your pact and fidelity

8. Yet I see you, niggardly eyed
While my eyes, their water forever flowing

9. May God watch over Thulayma and its dwellers
And plains enveloped in darkness

10. And the generous, from ancient to the mosque
To the two fortresses, sufficient ruins

11. There my playground of joy and pasture of passion
And neighbors of nobility

12. And playground of every delightful singing slave girl
Served by attendants who adorn her

13. Seen by the swift-footed suddenly glimpsed
Who then has neither behind nor ahead

14. And she sends from her glances arrows
That go where no arrows go

15. That time has passed, would that I
Were an echo of it, lost and confused

16. And misfortune left me in a time
Whose afflictions poured like clouds

17. A day I don’t rejoice in, and a night
In which the healthy sleep and I do not

18. Worries play with me
As wine played with its drinker

19. When I say I’ll rest some of my night
Memories come that rob all sleep

20. So resolve, my two companions, to travel, or else
Farewell to you both, peace

21. How I have wasted time in the company of every lowlife
Worthless, whose company is not lasting

22. I speak to him but he thinks it jest
And some of the rabble don’t understand the talk

23. By your life, I never cursed a father, but
Wicked people made you so, the villains

24. To touch the ground or cast Ali down
From my mount, is sacrilege

25. The day I see Ali, I care not
If the wicked are crooked or set straight

26. Fairest of face is he who accompanies him, accompanies
A steed who neither wrongs nor is blamed

27. The brave flee him and the cowardly fear him
As well as the army of tyrants

28. His sword’s resolve is weakened and
His call revives what clouds concealed

29. Aversion to courting worldly things
And determination for all noble deeds

30. You see, when praising him, a trembling
Like the trembling of swords in blows

31. The generous and the wasteful acknowledge his merit
Yemen and Sham envy his Egypt

32. Glory settles a land in which he settled
And for supremacy, tents are pitched

33. When forbearance is counted, neither Thabit
Nor Hudhayn are near him, nor Shammakh

34. Hatim falls short of his generosity
And Ka’b, and the generous Banu Bariq

35. And in battle, Amr is inept against him
And Awf, in loyalty to him, is but a boy

36. Luqayz of suitable traits, Amiri
A king for kings, their protection

37. Descendant of sublime ancestry, of every glory
Branches of the lofty, and deeds

38. You see horses flee him in alarm
As ostriches fled in disorder

39. If the champions of war flee him
Then in fleeing him, they crowd

40. He was brought up to lofty ancestry, by al-Ghuraīr
And his father Ibrahim, the noble

41. And if you remember Abu Jarwan, lowered
Would be sights, and speech interrupted

42. ‘Ali, you are this sun, light
When it rises and people are darkness

43. You are greatest when matters necessitate
And too great for people to be compared

44. If the noble forsake nobility
Then for every nobility you are its order

45. Troubles have prevented me visiting you
Melting bones when mentioned

46. And circumstances occurred, and scheming affairs
My sitting peacefully established for them travelling

47. And leaving visiting you was no choice
But desires have long been prevented

48. May you be spared the ignorance of the ostentatious one
Whose sky is always clouds

49. Scowling when facing a freeman’s face
And smiling amongst giggling girls

50. Generous when his parents are cursed
And his nose and the villains struck

51. Honoring his disgracer and disgracing a wretch
Thus ennobling the damned sperm

52. Fearing a guest, frowning
Especially when food is presented

53. My praise does not make you
Need other than it for obligation

54. And I don’t praise riffraff of people
Even if they possess heaped money

55. I was prevented that, for I am of judicious tribes
Who appoint but are not appointed

56. For them the howling of hyenas is a priest
And the lion’s roar is drums

57. Their talk of giving is empty pretense
And their war cry is discordant screams

58. A soul not made fearful by the worst of times
Even if annihilation comes with the protector

59. And I am happy even if the time of evil
Drove me out and adders writhed

60. While you have lasting good fortune, from people
The best of them leader of others

61. And were it not for that, and love of kinship
I would have shunned praising out of modesty

62. So continue glorious, excelling in nobility and pride
Above nobility and pride that can’t be attained

63. And live in bounty and lasting honor
With the protection of one who wrongs but is not wronged