1. Behold, have your eyes seen the loved ones who came to bid us farewell,
Stirring sorrows on the day we parted, and kindling yearnings?

2. Grudges that still harbor veils, white, shining roots, does, and fawns,
Enduring from their ruins that once harbored dwellings of those who camped at the abodes of the living, settled folk.

3. Abodes that cannot be replaced, nor, after loves, did they deny us lodgers,
And how many before, in the creed of passion, did we see visiting them an obligation and faiths!

4. Had it not been for the stealth of farewells to their people after resolve and separation, what happened would not have happened.
By my life! If parting befell, no distance drew from my heart its blackness or whiteness.

5. And if the homelands of Sa‘dī and his people departed, still in my heart they have homelands.
The drunkenness of youth and its blossoming distracted me, as did the drunkenness of wine in the coolness of the flasks.

6. When she sways in walking, she startles me, shamed by the bending of her flexuous form from the pliant branches.
Her hips complain of her buttocks, as her anklets complain of her legs’ dew.

7. Her beauties display narcissi, roses, apples, and pomegranates in perfection.
I cannot forget, after the separation, a tryst-place and stance where I lingered confused.

8. When passion denied us utterance and speech, we made the flowing tear our utterance and sign.
You say, “Does travel make you forget our covenant, and does separation from us console you at times?”

9. I said, “No, by God! My travel was not to relieve me of remembrance or distraction from you.”
“Rather, I saw Time turning its building trowel and separating members from me tyrannically and wrongfully.

10. “And every friend I trusted changed from what I was accustomed to; he betrayed and failed me.
“How often a journey brings ease to the youth, but in the morning he finds in it only frustration!

11. “So I exerted myself for my goal, though it cost me the people, and took from them a pact of brotherhood for myself.
“None scratched my hide but my own nails, nor did anyone show me hues of mankind except my eyes.

12. She said: ‘If resolve is unavoidable in order to attain ease and potential after hardship,
Then visit the sayyid of the Azd, the mature though still a youth,

13. Whose traits came with the noblest and most generous palms and greatest repute,
A lordly scion tracing back to Shayban, and tracing back to ‘Uthmān, and tracing back to Nubhān,

14. And tracing back to Akhlūd, and tracing back to Ya‘rub, and tracing back to Akhnūkh, and tracing back to Qahtān.
What path of merit can rival his? Who can compete with him in the arena of glory?

15. His glory ascends the heavens in rank, succeeding Bahram and succeeding Kaywān.
He has the asceticism of Jesus in the munificence of Hātim, and the valiance of Moses Kalīm Allāh son of ‘Imrān.

16. Nobler than al-Qa‘qā‘ among his councilors, greater than Chosroes son of Chosroes and the Khaqan.
Were it not for the piety whereby his repute was perfected, I would say of him Glory, Glory, Glory!’

17. Behold, O Jupiter, whose kingdom his existence adorned, as the just king adorns the kingdom!
He whom God has clad in a coat of light and made justice in rule proof manifest,

18. God’s love predestined you, O full moon of Shayban, for a glory He granted neither to sword nor spear.
Had the Merciful depicted glory in image, you would have been its head, eye, and human!