1. You are the happiest fortune, O morning breeze!
Is this delightful fragrance from blossoming meadows

2. Or is it the scent from Damascus?
Have you come to me with the tidings of springtime

3. That has delighted my heart and Damascus?
For God’s sake, tell me the truth, O morning breeze!

4. Goodness is yours, what are these flashes I glimpse?
Has a smiling face beamed with glad tidings?

5. Or did a mouth smile, or a cup revolve?
“Yes,” said the breeze, “your times of fortune have dawned,

6. And in them the full moon was made visible.
In them our knights lined up on high ground,

7. Pitching great tents in their lofty fortune,
And the sun of good fortune rose over those

8. Whose lot is fortune when ‘Ali is their model.
To me, the light of this sun is naught but generosity

9. From hands that pour bounty though laden with clouds,
Hands that have shown us the best kind of repose

10. To revive the deceased virtues and patch up ruins.
At praising’s door, my abilities fall short,

11. Though my constitution were that of the stars.
A bow whose name you see among the battalions

12. With a mouth like a garden blossom, veiled,
Arrows bedeck his resolve like the branches

13. Of a garden above which doves are a-flutter.
Below his bow’s brow you see eyes

14. That see blame though they are no eyes for blame.
He plunges into battle’s sea masked in mail

15. While the unveiled moon has no mask or covering.
He kindles war’s fire where gloom is deepest,

16. Its sparks fly and the dark nights are knotted.
In a prayer niche of Sulaymah’s great mosque

17. Indian swords pray with him as imam.
Say to those who vie with him: Cease, for I will not

18. Vie with palm trees where you are a thicket.
For he is ‘Ali, of happiest lineage, exalted,

19. Fortune his slave, and time his page.
The surah of his munificence has erased

20. The verse of night that onslaughts had erased.
He is the sea, though its shore is sweet water,

21. Which men enter and plunge into and swim.
Though I swim eulogizing in this sea

22. While the criticizers therein blame and forbid,
My praise of him is a cure against bitterness

23. While praising another is sickness and burden.
Let every claimant claim someone besides him,

24. I summon them to what proofs can establish.
For he was first in generous deeds,

25. And this is the second, his miracles manifest.
How many a cup of joy from his pleasing nature

26. Revolves around us wherever we sit!
His spells are permitted magic; all else,

27. When my ears hear them, is forbidden.
So perfectly wise, so excellent in manner,

28. This being, for each, a firm rope and pillar.
Were it not for his help, no poet could ever compose,

29. Can any structure stand without supports?
For the likes of me, none in his time

30. Deserves my goal. I have no wish for glory.
Where are the noble souls, where are the great?

31. Nay! Under dust are the great bones.
The garden of the virtuous is gone, withered

32. By the plight of time, only stumps remaining.
He has held safe the covenant of the Approved,

33. To which we cling as to firm rope.
He has called us with gestures of union,

34. An eye, a hand for the left, binding.
The springtime of glory, guarded by Providence’s eye

35. While enviers’ eyes from it slumber and sleep.
It was born of bounty, and after it

36. Barrenness came to the once fertile.
O moon of happy fate shining in our gloom

37. Bringing meaning, goals, perfection to hopes!
O branch of bounty’s garden no withering wind has shaken

38. From black stillness and completed ends!
To you we hurry the camels of praise

39. For you a necklace of brilliance made.
Without you, the tongue never uttered pure praise

40. Or threaded pearls made a necklace or string.
Without your forebears' nobility, Knights

41. Never lined up or the roses bloomed fasting.
Lo, for God’s cause the eye of the Exalted

42. Kept watch over people as they slept unaware
This, your namesake, preserved you night and day