1. They left, so what use are tears not spilled
In sorrow, what determination unyielded?

2. Our parting has been made plain,
The lover's love for the graceful gazelle.

3. The raven spoke true, their suns I saw
Yesterday setting on western horizons.

4. Had you witnessed us and what passion wrought
In our hearts, you'd envy those who don't love.

5. The watcher was busy, and a tryst delighted us
In estrangement and avoidance of company.

6. Her teardrops then poured forth and swelled,
Describing passion in the tongue of a weeping cloud.

7. She complains of parting to the slain youth
Whose eastward flowing tears separation tortured.

8. Shall I obey the blamers in you, and my raiment
Is the leaf of youth before it is carried away?

9. When I consider my age, I see it
As a pregnant she-camel's trailing rope fraying.

10. Twenty the dawn shortened, and longing lengthened,
Of beasts unchastened by rebuke.

11. What have I and the days that direct my state,
Increase my roaming in the lands?

12. I become companion to the darkness and lean
As pickings for the morning's blaze.

13. Thus I am by turns orient to the farthest east
And occident to the farthest west.

14. When time wraps you in a destructive robe,
Don the robes of love and wander.

15. I have refused to ride with the stars,
My determination a celestial body.

16. The night in the color of the raven as though it,
Were in its shroud, had not yet gone.

17. The Pleiades stole from its gloom as
The dye of youth faded from the hoary beard.

18. Until dawn appeared on its edges
Like water gleaming behind pondweed.

19. Seeking the highborn tribe of Wael
In that goodly, pure origin.

20. And the rest of the Arabs it witnessed for,
The sons of Udad boast and Arabize.

21. On the green plain with sweet flowing
Spring, glades and grassy sides.

22. Whether helping callers or accusing,
Visiting from east or west.

23. They put down their staffs and depended
On a king of polished manner.

24. A king whose valor in each battle
Is mature resolution and tested determination.

25. You see him in the dark tumult as though a
Moon circling the men with its planet.

26. O Malik son of kings most high
The virtues have no doctrine with them.

27. I came to you seeking so you spread
My hopes, and your palm’s generosity fulfilled my wish.

28. I am sated by righteousness with you and attainment
And quenched by family with you and hospitality.

29. You became the best guarantor of
Myself, kinder to me there than my father.

30. You gave until I thought abundant what
You gave me, an unowed trust.

31. So may Madhij's daughter praise you,
Of the numerous house of Gauth and Jundub.

32. And when you vie in nobility and bounty
With the generous victorious Tamim.

33. Should their palms stumble in a dry year,
Their rain's bounty makes you forget.

34. A people when asked for aid, they have nothing
But their own souls, no escape.

35. They walk under swords in the fray
As the thirsty walk to water's cool draught.

36. War harvested their heads, yet their heads still
Shine like Turkish pearls made pure.

37. They accumulate on the swords in battle
As dawn spilling on the stars sinking.

38. Such that if the choice of nobility in the land
Arose, it would belong to Tamim in the morn.