1. What grave fate has befallen you, renewing
The bygone era of Antarah the Absi?

2. While in the land of enlightenment, no trace remains
To recall an age now sunk in darkness.

3. Is there a meeting point where the soul that has returned
And the soul still urged out of nothingness

4. Could come together? What inspired your choice
Of a rough, harsh slave from nomadic stock

5. Coarse of hue and skin lamenting his passion
For his master’s daughter in rhythmic verse,

6. As narrators recount his ruthless savagery
Like a ravenous beast in his will to kill,

7. And his gentleness in his dalliances and his roughness
In the arena of death ‘mid spear and clouds of dust?

8.
He is the bereaved one crying out his grief

9. And he is the dueler battling vengeance and blame.
This is what the narrators have said of him. But is there

10. More for the discerning mind to grasp and understand?
God bless you, O just advocate

11. Who by knowledge defends him against the ignorant fabricator and the false accuser.

12. Antarah was no other among his people than a youth
Who envisioned for them what leaders of nations see.

13. If love managed to touch him in his seclusion,
It made the people hear in him the most passionate of melodies.

14. What he aspired for his nation was the noblest ambition
Of a free man, above suspicion or fault.

15. He watered the passion for Abla with his tears,
And he almost revived the withered land with his blood.

16. Love is what binds souls the most when they rise high,
And it may have the strongest claim to blind them.

17. So if you gain leadership and high office
Among the ruling class, that is the soul in servitude.

18. You have seen in this knight of Abs his true nature –
The true nature of a man neither blemished nor mute,

19. The true nature of the free Bedouin seeking
For his people nothing but the bond of kinship,

20. Offering Abla the promptings of passion,
And offering truth the inspiration of resolve and lofty ambition.

21. His only wish is the glory of his homeland,
His people's strength in unity of purpose and determination.

22. So if the crescent moon smiles
He hails it with hope smiling in the horizon,

23. Foretelling his years by the attribute of a moon
Dispelling darkness, a prophet destroying idols.

24. O you who restore Antarah to us today
In a waking vision graced by a dream's charm,

25. With something of the excellence your talent poured forth
In the best that tongues of verse have poured forth,

26. Have you seen one who casts aspersions on us
That we are the baseborn sons of Bajadah the plowman, should we cast?

27.
That we are the people who preserve our glories

28. Until the fates bring low other nations,
That the link between our past and present

29. Is an unbreakable rope,
That we are a people who love our homelands

30. Even in tales of Ad and Iram that are long gone,
That all eloquence is free expression to our taste

31. And we are the people of eloquence of sword and pen,
That each youth among us is in himself

32. A champion of all noble manners and virtues,
And were we to unite no heights would be