1. The earnest seeker swiftly attains his quest
Long has the night endured, and thy cheek grown wan and wasted.

2. O thou that pass the dark hours without sleep, no dearth is here, no severance.
The meadows smile with flowers, and glad is the estate of our lord.

3. The contrary natures are reconciled, its harshness gentled.
The morning star arises, and the dark of night gleams radiant at its rising,

4. As sunrise glows upon the east through victory of our lord.
It gives drink at eve to the wild cows and the devoted suppliants,

5. Whether the wound drip blood or the hand of aid show bounty.
To tribesman and honored mighty one are rations here,

6. Food and fine flour enough, wine and purest musk.
Fierce charger whose pace makes sunbeams lag behind,

7. Among them racers of purest strain, and warrior steeds of breeding true.
The highland stone-heaps it outstrips outstripping,

8. While down the ravines thunder stones dislodged.
Their war-cry at daybreak makes it more passionate,

9. As though the din of war rose loud within its hearing.
War-flame its ardour on the day of battle,

10. But tempered and benign its mood in days of peace.
It roams the plain's breadth, driving wild goats to mountain lair;

11. Therein a motley throng, the black, the white, the tawny.
The eagle has bound pact with it over its onslaughts,

12. Measuring its course through the field of war.
Its aim as the magnet-stone unerring;

13. Ere the intent forms, the stroke hits home.
Had David's eye but glimpsed its notches,

14. He had not vied with it, weaving his coat of mail.
From smoothed bow of toughest wood,

15. Alike to send shaft near and wing it afar.
When it clangs the warrior's soul exults

16. As exulted the soul of Moses' tree when it bowed.
It curves menacing as the frown of the indignant,

17. Where no softening appears, no gentle bend.
And it curves without strain, when unleashed,

18. As the frown curves untroubled and firmly controlled.
A thousand straight and rightly measured,

19. Flecked with the markings of calligraphy.
Intoxicated with virgin honey in their scabbards,

20. At the throat-thrust biting as a wolf's fang.
Blue as the vault, it sweeps in its flight,

21. And curves back like the planet Mars reversed in its course.
A blade so keen it anticipates the deadly blow;

22. On the day of evil the widows were its tidings.
It destroys with a glance, no wavering in the stroke,

23. No slit of pupil not centered on the slain.
As the torrent in spate sucked down by the ocean,

24. When the two embrace, fierce, resistless, unchecked!
On broad chest that fears no piercing,

25. A star of unalloyed Indian steel engraves its sign.
Quiet its sheath, wakeful the field of its endeavour,

26. Gentle of rein, but remorseless pursuing the adversary.
Hearkening to its rider's whisper, as though

27. The secret thought of the steed were captive in its heart.
In a dense phalanx like the towering mountains,

28. Cleaving the desert plain to make its way.
As though the ground were parchment, it the writing,

29. Black specks and tawny, a maze of dark and brightness.
Like burns of fiery match-cord plain by night,

30. Where steel-blue mail is lit by gleaming torches.
The sheen of morn has revealed it, as it veiled

31. The sun at daybreak, light suffusing the day.
A light whose whiteness brooks no spot of shadow,

32. Nor flaw in purpose, nor doubt to mar its truth.
Its judgment of events strikes home unerring,

33. As though the course of fate moved only at its will.
The subjects sleep untroubled under its rule,

34. While from the eyelids of the sultan sleep is banished.
How towering and thick its stalk of glories,

35. You reap at harvest the high theme your songs would hymn!
A people whose touch is rain, whose chief ones

36. Are heavy clouds, pouring in the waste their plenteous bounty,
The song-birds thrill in ecstasy at their fame,

37. And to bold singers they are impulse and engrafted bough.
Those who plant in the live ground are well nourished,

38. While builders of the waste must soon decamp.
All that have bound the diadem about their heads

39. Laud them aloud from pulpits, extolling and magnifying.
Feared while yet unborn, ere seen their might,

40. And trooped to for aid while cradle babes.
O sworn before the day to works of piety,

41. There in the Yemen was such fast and festival observed!