1. Where is inspiration to alight
While the mind lies plundered and affairs collapsed?

2. Can a scattered heart collect its fragments
From what it beholds, both order and chaos?

3. Youth has passed and its gardens are desolate,
Its birds have differed in their flocks.

4. Its adornments in my mind are unrecognizable
Until their ink would be denied by pens.

5. After imagery fades and illusions compile,
Our harshest knowledge is of realities.

6. But the caller of loyalty called for one
Whom I greatly honor and revere.

7. My praise of you - does it reach, Hamdi
What loyalty seeks and veneration necessitates?

8. Since you became Minister of Agriculture
It has been invigorated to achieve its goals.

9. Its aspects have aligned and its motions coordinated,
The sleepy have awakened.

10. Its regiments have marched, ravaging, rampant
Destroying crops, and leaving them is a crime.

11. The essence of that ministry does not elude you,
And the reins of every matter are in your hands.

12. Through you the country hopes for its advancement
With strong determination and organization.

13. O sword of victory for the right, I am not proven correct
If your actions do not slice like Indian swords.

14. If the glorious call you, you readily go,
And more beloved to you than war is peace.

15. None dislike you except he who is without
Heroism, when Egypt is threatened to be invaded.

16. Wondrous that you, a sword, are a refuge
To which the weak flock, cooing like doves.

17. Ambitions like the fires of villages and virtues
With crowds forever at their doors.

18. You give as if you were the guardian of the land
And most of those in it were orphans.

19. I have never known, while time bears its calamities,
Anyone curse you but the critic.

20. I see in you the best traits of the most glorious hero
Who belittles feats, though they are huge.

21. His covenant to exchange kindnesses is forever binding,
His word is his bond.

22. Since the beginning of its matter, the Bar Association
Has known his rationality, resolve, and daring.

23. It proceeds by his guidance on the path of righteousness
And by his opinion kings conduct their affairs.

24. If this nation is raised above others,
Then its farmers are its strength and pillars.

25. But they are the pillar of its sciences and arts,
And the pillar of all means of life.

26. If we leave them to their devices,
Malady will afflict the country and its people.

27. Applaud how the Bar Association serves,
Both the community and its leading sheikh.

28. My sheikh, before your rebuke, I admit
That I am blaming while these noble men witness.

29. Since we met, nothing has clouded our amity,
And our affection has increased as years passed.

30. But today I disobeyed your order once
In that speech was prohibited.

31. The excuse is that had I stayed silent,
Of all those honoring you, I would be the critic.