1. He turned a deaf ear to the reproaches of the censor
And ignored the reports of the slanderer

2. So he wiped the tears from his eyelids and they flowed
Cascading down his cheeks

3. Appealing in vain to the heart of an aloof beloved
Joining a thread the indifferent would not extend

4. He resigned himself perforce to the rule of love
Accepting from love what was his right, and its wrong

5. O you who reproach him, leave him to his madness
It is an illness no reproving will drive away

6. A malady that would defy Jesus Christ if he came
To heal it – so obstinate is its grasp

7. Of all the beauties humankind has borne
Only the black gazelle, the prey his snare would entrap

8. The day we parted I kissed his smile though
Tears had marred it when the weeping querist wept

9. O his loveliness when he weeps at leave-taking
And the tears rain down his cheeks in drops

10. Outshining the dawn sun – what his veil concealed
Shaming the moon – what his plaits concealed

11. The sash circling the roe’s fawn flank complained
Only of thirst, though circling the roe’s wet flank

12. The anklets twin on his legs made no sound
But for the anklets round his legs whispering near

13. O soul, hope not for ease if hardship ends
Nor despair though fate stands in your way

14. For time has a rhythm in its changes
Flowing to a hidden decree while man is blind

15. How often a barren land becomes fruitful grazing
How often a lush spring turns arid waste

16. No deprivation but gives way to relief
Nor joy that time does not render frail

17. Many hope, but attain not what they hope for
While many, not hoping, gain all they fought for

18. No state endures unchanged – how often the dawn
Presages a day that its eve will belie

19. How often the eve overturns the morn’s rule!
Should day break fair, I would not trust the skies

20. I have no trust in mankind, though I sought aid
From them, all turned from me, no help supplied

21. However friendly a man seemed, his core boiled
With deceit - though his face was my ally's

22. Men boast of glory – yet but asses are their sires of old!
You are peerless in bounty, in mould unlike

23. When swords flashed, you alone held bright blades in the fray
Towering over your peers when lances lowered

24. The noble quests availed to distract you
Nothing else ever has your attention held

25. A sun in glory and majesty – none but your signs guide it
A lion of war who makes strongholds quake

26. With no lairs save those of felled arch-enemies
How often you hurled back hordes in the fray

27. Till companies vanished, drowned in the mêlée
The day the clouds of war rise, veiling the sun

28. When the rooks of carnage croak hoarse in battle
O matchless in noble deed, whose overarching fame

29. Shadows all the horizons' expanse!
What can a poet say whose sole boast is your patronage,

30. The sole means to his ambition, that you allow?
None but you provides for souls in the wild

31. Save He who created man ere you succoured him
None climbs to the heaven of bounty but by yourmight,

32. No other attains those loftiest highs
I dedicate to your glory the jewel of verse

33. Capacious, far-spread, consummate and whole
Lines that if strongly declaimed at a sitting would exceed

34. Labid and Abu Tamam in duration
Extraordinary in rhetoric and lexicon

35. Leaving the reciter enraptured, entranced