1. What's past of meetings and partings
Or youth made dolorous by agony?

2. Or are these tears shed for the beloved's absence
While ardor yet flickers in my breast?

3. I stand before the abodes, a longing lover
Or chance visitor, while in their stead

4. Are paltry substitutes. They have settled
In the meadow, a tribe of perfect ease.

5. The long nights have left there no trace
Save afire that on its embers grieves,

6. And tent-pegs, though the tents are gone,
Their guy-ropes like twisted adders.

7. A moon cloaked in the night comes to me
Or a phantom courtesy grants me.

8. With that of which if asked I have been emptied,
Lacking all power to render aid.

9. For something has my palace taken offence
So I withdraw, confessing my misdeeds.

10. But confession of misdeeds is now extinct;
Act and avowal are no more allied.

11. Men wonder at my seclusion. Yet the fringes
Hide dwellings of the noblest breed.

12. That I abstain from governance and rank
For like me the world's expanse is wide.

13.
Not that I've gained such wealth, but I'm a man

14. Whom sufficiency itself suffices.
My hunting dogs no longer course with me;

15. My hunt their training disregards.
The common folk are lost to hope

16. Of favor from a lord who no equity shows.
If you gain power you gain protection too

17. Where men treat equals equally.
The like of Ahmad ibn 'Ali you admit

18. Excel you, vie you howsoe'er you strive
One pliable, conforming what you love,

19. Or whom your feud of contrariety suffices.
A fleer of Ukrama or Marwa between two beliefs

20. Or pebbles flung in hot dispute?
Of writers the most cunning is perfidy;

21. The scale of fair and honest speech weighs down.
Blessed the patron of enough from a trustee

22. Or debtor true of honest payment!
What you see as modest in lewd times

23. You see from him in times of chastity.
A pride that spurns the world, a soul

24. Too proud for scrambles after dignities,
And height of purpose that we wish

25. Were cloak and camel-bags of wayfarers.
The immigrant birds have brought report of him

26. While latecomers creep like cringing whelps.
Folk of Sabur, lords of countless troops

27. And seekers of the bounty Sabur vouchsafes.
They inherit the vanity their sires supposed

28. True religion: Holy War and culture.
O Abu 'Abdallah, God has stretched for you

29. The lofty structure of the noblest estate.
No spring shall miss your Tigris' swelling flood

30. Though Khusraw's palace be left dry and desolate.
We have been watered from you copiously

31. With a torrent of ready flow and volume.
If we are tested, singly you defy

32. Legions of them, be their numbers myriad.
You pierce far goals, no intermediate stages

33. The winds traverse halfway ere their failing.
Concurrence of opposites in what your hands

34. Have done weighs down heavily or lightly.
You are renowned as the stars are renowned