1. I say to Sa'adiya as she sheds her tears,
While the stars light up the dusk with their lamps:

2. "Let me watch the star in the gloomy darkness
That its faint light pierces as it wanders about.

3. One like me, once resolved, does not waver
With the crying of girls and the pouring of tears.

4. Don't you know that when cares take hold
Of my eyes, they leave no room for sleep?

5. The horse's night-gallop over the plain of sand
Grows tiresome when the distances stretch long.

6. I am the son of a house over which glory pitched its tents
And at whose doors the mantles of apostles spread.

7. For it the lofty stars of Ursa Major descend
From the trees of Khindif, and meteors shoot from Ya'rub.

8. When the Umayyad loses his pride,
He complains of it to the Highest Heaven and the Guardian Angel."