1. If a man does not fortify his soul with patience,
And if his glances do not speak with guile,

2. And if he is not prone to slumber in comfort,
Then ruin and treachery threaten him.

3. He yields to evil and deems the plain easy,
Yet in command he is a fighter.

4. So wonder not that civilization is the bane
Of the sincere man, and glory harms its lodgings.

5. How many a despised creation at first touch
Is soft, but if assailed, shows its wisdom.

6. I avoided him in submission to time, so it gladdened me,
For fate has a judgment none can turn back.

7. And I thank custom though it costs me dear,
For I have generous rains and barren ones.

8. Do not provoke me, Silent One, with babble,
Resembling truth, but false in essence.

9. I will honor even the pride of my foe,
And censure him for his acts, not his words.

10. By resignation lives one of Hashim's lions,
Whose abode the clouds' abundance waters.

11. Zealous to aid the outcast are the hands
That check when fickleness fails.

12. I clung to them when calamities frowned,
And left them when time brought all its disasters.

13. As though after the parting I were one morning
Languishing upon the carpet with a Khaibarian.

14. And if my verse backs not my wish,
When resolve falters, its blades will.

15. I obeyed earth's kings with a fool's obedience,
So my fortune dawned and worries ceased.

16. But I sing it to make my brother glad,
The bright-faced one, whose joints are supple.

17. For he showed me situations from which
Ballad and bard shrink.

18. My cheek upon the lion of the clan, honored,
Bestowing on me their awe, receiving mine.

19. A day like the eagle's life: its early fire
Distant from gloaming and waning.

20. I crossed with it a stage as though its mirage
Were waves of a sea that knows no shore.

21. Vast its range, exhausting vigor its step,
And the emptiness of the wastes deceives its ignorant.

22. All settled tremble at its fearsome onslaught,
And its pounding makes its riverside quail.

23. Waters like driven rain are paltry,
Yet the track of roses soaks the breast of its seeker.

24. Glorious, as though the Pleiades' setting
Were the place its waters rinse when pure.

25. As though my roaring in the wastes and my stream
Were the punishment of an obedient perfecter.