1. My friend, blame me less and be forbearing
In passionate longing has love cast me into remembrance

2. Of a fair one, pleasing as the curved sand-hill,
A moon-like beauty, lovely in form and face.

3. Slender-waisted, a delicate branch, her companions
Like the sand-hill, pastured upon by the soft-scented herbs,

4. Her leg, as it were, wrapped in the long yellow worms of the sand-heaps,
Fair of cheek and chin and hair.

5. If a mote fell down slantwise upon her breast,
It would slide off her robe upon the folds of her flesh.

6. To her kinswoman she complained, when my sickness was prolonged,
And chid her for the failing of my hearing and of sight.

7. "Would," she cried, "that I might ransom what he is distraught withal
By some of my flesh and some lopping off of my life!"

8. The heart may keep faith for love awhile, then leave it
For fear of reproach and fear of the spy's shame.

9. Leave thy love and forget love steals on thee
And have patience and be as one drunken waking from his drunkenness.

10. So I spoke reasonably without error,
Led by my love for her to an understanding heart.

11. Mine ear and mine eye pledged troth with my body concerning her,
How then could I have patience with my ear and my eye?

12. Were they to follow me in forbidding converse with her,
Then would my limbs and fragments charged me with treachery.

13. It was my lady kinswoman dropped me a hint,
And a glance from her was a decree of Destiny.

14. Bukair said, "Wilt thou not go, and we will ask of them,
And look thou well—there's no harm in looking and surrender."

15. I forget not our unveiling and all our discourse,
Her sand is mingled with our dust in peril.

16. Her words preceded her tears that outran them,
The burden of this heart of mine from life's remainder.