1. Your name evokes a picture and dwelling place
That has its niche in the heart's inner case

2. So after living remains naught but lines
And sheets therein with dots of faded trace

3. The bending boughs long for the wasteland's gloom
And the straggling trees for it yearning race

4. Pale from whiteness toward every bending neck
The glance's arrow roams and takes its chase

5. It may enchant the minds of each watcher
And steal the minds, though union it forsake

6. It may bewitch the minds of each who looks
When it flows down adorned in necklaces

7. The nightly moon above a branch of bāna
Which a wisp of sand from the dunes does shake

8. Her mouth's fragrance is like the perfume
Of pure musk, refined and well condensed

9. As though the striking of her lips in sipping
Is the humming bees' or running honey's sens'd

10. As though the sugarcane's rod in standing
When it bends in the cold, makes honey dens'd

11. How wondrous that freely I give my soul
While she in union is miserly and tense

12. I wove for her anxiety and gloom
And passion—and composing fits the dolent

13. A remedy that I surpassed with glory
Having folded its textile in the desert dense

14. When I crossed a wasteland in ignorance
After it came a wasteland in ignorance

15. And when we saw the time on us was narrow
And that the matter in it was too condense

16. We went straight to Abū al-Ṭayyib, the noble youth
Who deserves high pride and loads intense

17. The proudest king on earth in self and stronghold
The safest in his rule, most just and condense

18. The highest in esteem, most generous in hand
And truest in glory with lengthy expense

19. Saying and doing, whenever he speaks that's enough
He attains the heights in his words and deeds dense

20. Inclined to gaining praise, desiring it
And in the mountains of glory, he is intense

21. A protector who came in the arena of time late
But in the arena of glory, he is first hence

22. The stars of height adorned him in their eyes
And the fresh draughts of praise were for him dispense

23. To you, ibn Nabhān, the king we have come
Our swords glittering bright with sharp edge tense

24. At dawn asking for rain with pouring clouds
To pour down with abundance and condense

25. And times of days we complain of disasters
To God the complainant and the dependence

26. This feast has brought you blessed omens
With fortune arriving and fortunes condense

27. You looked and the eyes below you were humble
You crowned with the crown of heights immense

28. And you approached the people going straight to you
That I may extol in exaltation intense

29. And I kissed the parchment which to kiss
Is the greatest and highest eminence

30. So live in ease, while you seek the heights
The firm matter is smoothed and made less dense