1. Goodness is yours, though I ask for more and do not complain,
Nor show ingratitude for blessings flowing like ships.

2. Perhaps I've tried to strengthen a bond,
Yet not a moment with you have I secured as mine own.

3. So rebuke me not for blaming, I just
Rubbed a hide not pierced by rubbing.

4. Shall I praise myself if you think well of my praise
When you are the one who remembers and you are the one who purifies?

5. Then I'm deprived of all the good from you,
And have no share or plenitude of glory.

6. Why should I transgress when your justice embraces all,
And why should I resent when your dominion is mine own dominion?

7. When I made sacred bounds lawful, I shed
Blood unlawful to be shed.

8. If my share of you were nearly a match,
I'd swallow my resentment, but yours is the dominion.

9. If my opinion brought me your good pleasure's reversal,
I'd leash my soul, but that would be perdition.

10. One whom you champion is not tossed
The vicissitudes of time and its blessedness withdrawn.

11. Any bond of union from you I seek refuge for it
In your grace, though no intricacy is in its strand.

12. That care has not fallen ill with any
Malady that kills, though it may have cracks.

13. No opinion of you has gone astray since knowing guidance,
Nor has faith in you been marred by any doubt.

14. Word came to me from beyond perceiving that you blame
And your vastness for it has constraint.

15. You whose authority decides all affairs,
Neither preventing blame nor sanction has effect.

16. Any coldness from you, sheer and harsh,
Would leave you empty, with no aid from cessation.

17. Do you think I lavished a fool's lavishing
Of praise on you mixed with any deceit?

18. I did not take your praise as a burden
Of sin forbidden by ritual purity or bloodshed.

19. I deserve no credit if perfume is diffused,
Nor the censer if it spreads the musk.

20. But perhaps you were just to it, praising it—
Does it not share in diffusing its spirits?

21. Remember God guided you, I follow,
And you are devout, unchanged by alloy.

22. Of the pearl whose strand you adorned
With artifice, my share is just order and stringing.