1. For how long will every complainer be reproachful,
And blame is endless like passion?

2. How many lovers have I seen being blamed,
And I thought one who has tasted passion is excusable.

3. O you who are repelled like a startled gazelle, and yet
You would have been resolute had I been the repulsor.

4. The kohl of his eyes spends the night
Extracted from his wine above his mouth.

5. So his eyelids were squeezing but without wine,
And his mouth was as if filled with unstrained wine.

6. You left me to anger intimacy by what
Would please it, the cup-companion and the night-chat.

7. Passion was a confirmed tradition,
Its witness standing by it, present.

8. But you in your conduct made
The sin of passion unforgiven.

9. And an attacker, raider, upon a band
The fates turned away from them going round.

10. He felled them around him and frightened him
My steadfast watch over him.

11. So he urged me for an hour but did not see me
Following the people after them.

12. He said, "I advise you of me and surrender him."
Patience over his abandonment to the patient.

13. So I stayed in a garden accustomed to
My palm’s home and gladdening the onlooker.

14. I stroll in its flowers and remember what
People relate of Abu Tahir,

15. Of noble traits bringing spring to summer
On the back of his raining generosity.

16. Whenever a youth whose father built him
An addition to the populous building,

17. Then he excelled and contained within himself slender
Stocks preceding competitors, monopolizing them.

18. Thought comes not to mind in his writing them down,
As if his pens had their own ideas.

19. Words and deeds run together,
No first among them and no last.

20. Why do I see two whenever they shared
In his hand, one would rise bankrupt?

21. Money never accompanies intimacy,
Unless it thereby leaves it.

22. When hopes stood straight I rose up
Thankfully benefiting from his gifts.

23. And I came to ask the destitute about what
They got, as if I were their news-bearer.

24. Spread your power upon the fates, neither
Indebted, nor keeping, nor imprisoning.

25. The best way to deal with them when generosity
Triumphs over them is a fair allotment.

26. And if miserliness does not help its owner
Numerous helpers and supporters will work.

27. What can its people do, however many,
Between the billows of your raging sea?