1. Let your wearing of festival clothes delight you, even if the world tomorrow congratulates you for wearing them,
And that you are a pillar of the kingdom and the king whose standards kings’ measures fall short of,

2. And it congratulates you that no glory remains which you aspire to that your hands cannot attain, and that no palm remains to compete with it,
And that you have subdued misfortunes so that they submit to your might, so that no calamity remains which it can confront.

3. For preoccupations have left you vacant, and blessed is your vacancy from the judgments you were conducting.
Indeed, such leisure is for the likes of you, for it is the rehearsal of knowledge whose rehearsals do not pall.

4. There remains in your self something that sparks and nothing can rival the striking of the flint of knowledge.
And a generous largesse whose wealth does not cease, its bounties given unstintingly and its rarities.

5. For every boon companion, the days of his life and the radiance of his face,
One day is overcast, another bright and sunny.

6. All enjoy your hospitality, and indeed only the produce of palms is sweet whose roots are sweet.
And the taking of a share of listening, when the cares of the anxious youth are deadened by it.

7. The melodies of the world move you when its singers compete,
And the drinking of wine whose draughts God has declared lawful, to which bow the prime of youth and the obstinate.

8. Colored by the vine are types, but for its darkening them would cover it a yellow shirt and its woof.
Its drinkers have voluntarily kindled its fire, and the body of fire is no body that one can touch.

9. For it experienced the pain of cooking in days of old until its disgrace was stripped away from it and the doubts about it disappeared,
Then it stood in the abjection of lowliness until its clothes were crumpled away from its purity and its clothes.

10. And it was brought as a bride to the drinking of beneficence, so they held high festival which no ill-omened thing attended
And which encompassed on the horizon of the sky its good fortune, and on the earth its generosities and bells.

11. In the presence of a king whose might refuses vainglory, and who is adorned by both his intimates and his court.
He has a tranquility which if it touched stone would cause water to spring from its sides, and the withered to leaf.

12. If his face, opinion or action shine radiantly in a night whose thick darknesses dazzle,
He espied the right course and proper hearing, while his judgments and estimations remain correct.

13. Two noble qualities tremble the generous man over them, as the fir trembled which resisting axes cut down.
When they tempt the soul of a well-fashioned man with loss and gain or the love of death that engulfs him.

14. But he resisted them for glory, for were his soul not aroused for a glory above which it rises he would not resist them,
And neither the sea, nor the seas with their depths, nor the lion, nor the lions with their cubs.

15. More truthful in his generosity in every crisis, and more valiant when the trembling of his steed’s legs shake his horsemen,
By him the age, however much it is dispraised, hopes- his beseecher and his despairer.

16. Tomorrow he will attain what he will attain, even if what of glory he already has would suffice him
But he refuses except to act with its like when an inheritance that guards the inheritance is lost.

17. So cease, you who speak ill, to extinguish his light- but that is a light whose wicks you cannot snuff,
You have attained the star so extinguish it! How can you attain it? And if you attained it you would not leave unextinguished.

18. Abu Ahmad, still your glory remains a morsel that chokes every envious or evasive rival.
I swear you are the speaker, the doer, who tomorrow glory will be confined by its fetters.

19. When your peer attains his peer, your peer is as the star- touch it and you violate its taboo!
You have attained the mounts of the world and are not like the ruled is to you the ruler.

20. Indeed, many a saying you have said, O Ibn Tahir, by which after tumult its echoes resound,
And deed the doers saw you do, so they bent their necks abased, each humbled before you.

21. After it speech is ashamed, so that those adept at speech fall silent,
Until speech leaves the mute inept.

22. To action every doer is urged so that all of them circle back to it wearing it.
I am amazed by him who gifts you poetry as a present yet speaks poetry while beneath you in rank.

23. Does he gift you poetry after hearing by your poetry, except one inattentive of heart and sleepy?
You who can summon speech by power so that diffident speech comes to you familiar.

24. Is that not so? Or does the stumbler in resolution spurn it from you, after seeing your gifts?
You who have cleared the way for bounty until its path smiled, like a downpour that laughs at thickly planted meadows.

25. Barriers all but bar poetry from you when it measures itself one day against your poetry, unequal.
So it hies with joy that there is no seller of praise when it sees you, though you drive a hard bargain against it.

26. You who says to its people what debars them from poetry in every manner they have not seen the like of,
And do what summons them to it so that they all recoil to it, donning it again.

27. So their leaving it is an avowal of selves that you are beyond mankind and jinn a horseman.
And their speaking it gratitude you lead them to by deed no base souls have dared.

28. Customs of honor that arouse gratitude when firstborn, how can gratitude slumber when honor is watchful?
Though the best of saying from them is from you and from your traces- their fervid fancy takes its heading.

29. Who learned what you have said and done, so the produce of the planting you planted gave its harvest.
Even if the enemies are unwilling to allow you your share, it is plentiful share, undiminished by rivalry,

30. And even if the unjust belittle your due, it is a weighty due, not unjustly depreciated.
So live forever in humble life and fortune, even if opposed by one of discordant hatred.

31. You have not ceased to be, on a day you hurl a fleet, for you have many a day hurled its armadas.
And a narrow strait, its glass surfaces gleaming and its Indian blades and spears flashing.

32. The swelling waves of death enfolded my brother, yet their tracks were encompassed by streaming defenders.
He came to you letting the dove lead him on though not deterred by those of evil and slanderous natures

33. Who see me with an eye of delusion and falsehood, as an object of perdition, while the fates haggle over him.
Before he spoke- and the guards were around you, horsemen like a torrent therein are threatening forms,

34. With cries of warriors, of piercing resolves, their chests dense, their sides massy cuirasses.
So his hopes were diminished and plans made vain, though they were such as are not usually vain.

35. And he was brought to a basin whose roses remained a pact, pouring the water of life while the sea is parching.
How many an object of desire- the death blow stands between it and attainment,

36. And the expectation of a suppliant, disappointment in the promise, abject.
He who jousts with the raging maelstrom to subdue it- the maelstrom will surely subdue him.

37. And how many a foe of yours has his death blow tasted from the penetrating blades of death and its hacking swords!
While another- deliverance and granted quarters have rescued him to the innermost quarters of an abode you have surely raided.

38. You have busied yourself with the ethics of the age to tame them, so its unruly may be valiant and its wretch grow prosperous.
You have disciplined them like a meadow whose permanent rain has made it fruitful,

39. Weeping over it until its frowner breaks into laughter.
Tomorrow between open and fast closed, cowled and turbaned.

40. Bowing in prayer to the orb of the sun aslant, their heads inclined to it if the wind has not followed what inclines.
At times the Magians turn to it in worship and at times the Christians humble themselves before its temples.

41. Though its diffusion of light praises God since it remains ever sowing it.
Ever bestowing life, distinguished, guarded, tilted now one way now the other, embraced.

42. If no downpour befalls it the dew leaves it verdant, handsome, vying.
When you brought together the daughters of poetry in truth, it befitted brides be revealed to you.

43. My poetry has shrunk from all but you- so I have launched it toward you and it clings fast to you.