1. I lament youth for women’s needs, though I
Have other motives I shall lament as well.

2. I lament youth for the grace that pleased me
When seen by my eye in all its views.

3. Nothing was greater in my eyes than its worth
For itself, not for the passion it inspired.

4. My eyes took such delight and wonder in it
Apart from those eyes for which it was dressed up.

5. No women were more enamored of it than I,
And the soul holds nothing dearer than itself.

6. How it adorned the eye that gazed on it,
While it adorned another eye and made it weep!

7. How it cleared the rheum in a shining eye
Until when it wandered there, it clouded again!

8. Women rise in the morning and pelt it with glances
Like arrows shot through the bow-notch they have greased.

9. It flatters them with nobility, thinking it unleashed
Arrows no thing in existence can equal.

10. I lament youth for the self when it wearies
Of it and turns away leaving it behind.

11. Then neither women’s beckoning rouses me
To it, nor the soul freely inclined to it.

12. If I come back, it is from a reluctant self
Like one driven against his will, forcibly prodded.

13. I lament youth for the self when revelry
Hums and the cupbearer hastens to pour its wine.

14. Then I have no joy drinking it,
Nor does any boon companion stop tippling it.

15. How many sighs fill my breast at that moment
For sorrow deep in the heart’s core I conceal!

16. I lament youth that fortune used to assist
In all the pastimes it undertook.

17. I lament youth for hopes I was devastated
When they were lost, that were my soul’s companions.

18. I lament youth for a soul that sees no recompense
Or substitute for it since it was gratified.

19. I lament youth for an eye whose gaze has failed
After decay and whose aim is lost, unsure of its guide.

20. An eye I knew of surpassing skill
That hearing and sight kept growing keener.

21. But now it has dimmed and I weep for an eye
Whose vision I witnessed extending far and wide.

22. I lament youth for an ear whose hearing
Could respond to a call from afar.

23. An ear that has failed me, though I never knew it
To require reproach for being hard of hearing.

24. I lament youth for a hand whose forearm
Could ward off blows and twist the wrists of an assailant.

25. A hand I knew that freely bestowed the fruits
Of delight is now miserly, withholding its gifts.

26. My heart was immersed with youth
In a joy—I know not what led me to it.

27. A solace to the soul it used to cool it
With the wind’s breeze, eternally reviving it.

28. It was as if my soul wandered with it
In a garden whose waterer kept it irrigated.

29. It was as if my soul felt it
A gentle wind and sweet basil renewing it.

30. It was as if my soul found in it
A loving hand to clasp it on every occasion.

31. When one dies, his needs die, it is said,
Except for youth and the needs that perpetuate it.

32. Youth passes but leaves behind
A yearning in the soul that grieves and hurts it.

33. Would that the grief died with it!
Or that it lasted, and the grief remained enduring!

34. But no, it goes while grief stays
In the soul, residues that torment it.

35. If it departs, what it entrusted memory
Grief will not manage to dispel or erase.