1. The specter came by at night and robbed me of sweet sleep.
The stars flickered like fires seen from afar.

2. Darkness spread, turning the night white amid the blackness.
My passion made me heedless in love and pliant in affection,

3. So how long will you reproach me, when the fires of passion
Rage in my liver, ever stoked?

4. Leave me to my misguidance - no one but me
Is responsible for my rectitude or corruption.

5. I accept the torments of love and the agony
Of passion among all people.

6. Do you see anyone who could replace
My heart with another heart?

7. I regret a life now gone,
A vanished youth never to return,

8. And nights of joy whose pleasures
Are over, ended with the bliss of union.

9. Passion guides me to her, and yearning and longing drive me.
Her soft body complains of being chafed by her shift.

10. She is my malady and remedy, my best fortune
Derived from my time.

11. She is my spirit, my life's purpose,
My eternity, my question and desire.

12. You fool, beware the plots of a companion and her appointed time!
How many, whose surface shows consent, within are serpents in the grass!

13. The deadly venom may be hidden in limpid water,
And embers can lie concealed under ashes.

14. I swear by poetry - after her I will not sell
My verse in a down market.

15. If she spurns me, I will renounce her purity,
Or if she displays a defect in her pillar-like form.

16. And if she makes white equal black in her sale,
I will commit suicide by cutting pieces.

17. How desolate are places from which I took
Refuge in the safety of travel and the shelter of a comrade!

18. The wisdom of poetry guides me; beyond it
All other guidance approaches that of every guide.

19. The finest praise befits Abu Sultan Mahmud the Open-Handed,
Who gives thousands daily in time of bounty,

20. Depriving lives in time of the sword.
No delegation can count the thousands,

21. Hundreds and individuals he gives.
He subdues every dissenter, vanquishing

22. All rebels with the sword and returns them to propriety.
To him Zuhair among the Banu Abs merits no mention,

23. Nor does Ka'b among the Banu Iyad.
No neighbor consults Abu Hanifa, who protected

24. A man's foot from locusts.
The noble youth is Hatem, and he is the Excellent One

25. Among all people, settled and nomadic.
The illustrious, eloquent, gallant, of pure descent,

26. With lofty chambers and in rugged highlands.
O you who strikes the necks of foes

27. In Arab fashion with quick-slaying swords!
Only the reddest steeds envy you,

28. Outshining the torches of thoroughbreds.
By you verdure is prolonged over this greenery

29. Until the day of mustering.