1. The dove coos melodiously in the most beautiful valley
As it passionately yearns between my rapture and the dwellers of the lowland

2. The lowland breeze commanded you, fascinated
It scented a breeze from you, so you sang to the breeze

3. It warbled on the branches, playing around from passion
And the love of the young man grows from that warbling

4. Tell me, O brother of passion, how did you know love?
And none but me knows it truly, neither jesting nor serious

5. How many a youth, if he woke up a lover
Did not touch this love, and if he touched, was not smitten

6. So coo, may God protect you, the cooing of an enamored one
Infatuated, not knowing beauty or ugliness

7. Wandering mindlessly and yearning pointlessly
And walking without knowing night from dusk

8. Embodied from fervor, nurtured from passion
Begotten from love, enduring in explaining

9. So neither advice deters him, nor blame prevents him
Nor counsel profits, so counseling is useless

10. That is a mark of mine in love, none rivals me
In secret and open love

11. I clung passionately to a delicate, slender, tall beloved
Who grew up with the most delightful beauty on the right side

12. As for her face, it is a shining sun
And her forehead, so delicate, depicted the morning planet

13. Her smile is lightning, flashing, and her cheek
Is that pillar of dawn blossoming at dusk

14. Her eyebrows are a bow, and her eyes
Are swords, while her stature is a branch and a spear

15. She wounded my heart in the east with her glance
So that red sunset is from that wound

16. Her cheeks are red roses, their redness
And her moles are musk, exuding a good scent

17. The roses of her cheeks are mine, and the sprinkling of their water
And oh, the good scent of the roses' sprinkling!

18. Her saliva is wine, I wished to taste it
Even if the limits were by sword and cleaving

19. Necklaces of pearls adorned her neck's beauty
Like the beauty of her breasts' drapery and décolletage

20. So if you smell her neck one day, O eyelid
That is the Feast of the Sacrifice in my infatuation's immolation

21. The edges of her clothes folded over her beauty's bosom
So people's minds were lost from that folding

22. A wondrous beauty, her face is the sun
With the spear of her figure, it wounded the heart with a wound

23. She says to the people of passion, "You have slept, wake up!
For the sun of day has risen over my spear"

24. When the sun contends with her face
You see the sun has set next to that contention

25. I fell in love with her by hearing, then glimpsed her
And by hearing, love appears or starts by a glimpse

26. She appeared, illuminating the horizon, east and west
An appearance like Layla's, from the Divine Throne and the heavenly palace

27. So I opened my heart to her and said to her, "Look
At the heart I opened to God," but she ignored the opening

28. She inspired my heart and mind fleetingly
And passed by, leaving no place for reconciliation

29. While I was thrown by fate into its purpose
And I tasted the bitterness of death in that tossing

30. So flow, O my infatuation, in sorrow and pouring
And flow, O my tear, and flow, O my eyelid!

31. And if the eye's tear dries up, O my liver, ascend
To the eyelid, so you may come out from it by flowing

32. And substitute for my eye's tear, for it
Flows without dripping and remains with dripping

33. I spend my nights sleepless, not knowing sleep
My wakefulness accompanies me from dawn to dawn

34. And the sleep of tiredness mounted in the meadow of my eye
And the sleep of tiredness is the most beautiful mounting

35. So tiredness became a fat sacrifice, I made it
A redemption for the arrows of the eye— excellent this sacrifice!

36. I laid it down in the eye when I slaughtered it
And I smiled at the takbir in that slaughtering

37. Oh my heart, the spear point has harmed it
And distance and estrangement have led it to misery

38. And woe is me, since when his union was
Impossible, what is the heart's hope of success?

39. My weakness—may God humiliate you—when you exposed me
By loving one who surpassed the full moon in brilliance

40. So if my fervor, my passion, and my yearning
Are faults, then expose me to the utmost exposure

41. And display me with this exposure among them; I have laid bare to
Every slanderer in censure and criticism

42. So let the dove of the valley sing—you have delighted my hearing
By mentioning she whom I love—and repeat it with warbling

43. And reach with me the utmost in praising Ahmad striving
And always praise him with the best praise

44. Father of glory, pillar of honor in every place
And tamer of summits, he humbled them with toppling

45. He inclines to attaining knowledge and heights
Seeing that this earning is the best earning

46. One whose trade is gaining knowledge
Will have understanding as the most fragrant profit

47. He set out seeking God's Opening, desiring it
With seriousness and resolve, so he became manifesting that Opening

48. Brother of knowledge, Lord of understanding, live his intelligence!
He shows you, even if he does not elucidate, the best presentation

49. He has no ambiguous problem, unless it is clear
Nor dimness, unless he elucidates it with explanation

50. Father of benevolence—when resolving any issue—
Iyas of intelligence, his opinion is protected from change

51. The issues surrender wherever he aims to resolve them
For advice he harmonized as the most just advice

52. And from his justice, judgment has wandered boastfully
And injustice has kept away from it by removal and cleansing

53. He charges with the word of truth, fearing no critic
And commands right, forbidding wrong

54. Precise in his judgments, expert in his rulings
And he distinguishes clarification from condemnation in its proper place

55. Father of righteousness and kindness with a subtle manner
Brother of forbearance, Lord of truthfulness in seriousness and jest

56. Praiseworthy traits and attributes—he has contained
Noble qualities like generosity and pardon

57. A cloud of dew, essence of generosity, so it has a seal
In its heavy downpour—described as stingy

58. An eloquent orator, none rivals his eloquence
And who can rival horses in running and exertion?

59. An orator excellent in prose, and as for his poetry
It is the utmost extent of fine choice poetry

60. One whose handwriting made me forget the scripts of Ibn Muqla
So people have turned away from them to his script

61. He presented me a poem from the daughters of eloquence
Which rose above the inferior, like the full moon and bright light

62. He was profuse in his elaboration praising me
While I am not worthy of this praise

63. So it has no faults or grammatical errors
Nor did a barren mind compose it, or one who stumbled blindly

64. So here is your protection, O son of eloquence
A poem inclined to a beautiful style, fluttering coquettishly

65. Saturated with the scent of your praise in fragrance
It has perfumed the horizons with aroma and redolence

66. Woe to the son of God's Opening in prosody—he is a sign
And how excellent in prosody is the sign of the Opening!

67. I responded with it resembling that poem
Though it does not resemble it, as the difference is clear as dawn

68. So accept it, for acceptance is its aim
And do not turn from it to rejection and discarding

69. Remain in God's safety as long as the morning breeze blows
And sights roam with a glance and glimpse

70. As long as the companion of passion sings when the dove trills
"The dove coos melodiously in the most beautiful valley"