1. My passion diminished at the banks of the Euphrates,
And the love of eyes afflicted me.

2. So I rejoiced in passion, then grew short
Of righteousness, while the righteous were pleased.

3. The King showed me the right way when I was
A brother of ungainliness and waywardness,

4. Beyond any doubt except the groves of the sand dunes.
Then I rested at the expanses of whiteness.

5. No memories here of the bygone days of youth,
And how can there be memories of years long past?

6. So be gone what bows my determination
And exposes my ruins.

7. I lost my youth and Allah guided me
Through an age of bitterness and decay.

8. And what I fear of evil has come to pass-
An eye that awakes every slumberer.

9. At daybreak he is like one who forgets,
When he pulls out his foot in the sand drifts,

10. You will be brought closer by a smooth rock
That indicated rainwater in the fragments.

11. You hid it for twenty days and attained it
When you attained a loan amid the barren land.

12. She is hump-backed, her shoulders laid bare
By the rubbing of a rugged saddlecloth.

13. A she-ass difficult when the unkempt one rises,
What rising by the one full of piercing cries!

14. The mangy camel went to the broken land
And the camel-litters swayed.

15. Like a beast of the desert, long of mouth
Like the arm of the wild cat and long of fang,

16. Whose joined eyebrows cut furrows
In the plain before the irrigation canals were dug.

17. So it is empty of vegetation except for water
And waved about in a barren land prone to decay.

18. And the salty ground continues being sweet
Like a well-watered meadow.

19. The sun disdains to incline with the likes
Of the idiot, an idiot pelted with dung.

20. And the emptiness of a plain it disturbs,
In which the tribe raises a campsite after one decayed.

21. And huts that were not fed by continual rain
Everlasting, being taken down and rebuilt.

22. And caves of brushwood and rush
And bathing hollows made by hands long indicted to tillage.

23. Clad in darkness they retire at night
Like the nesting places of wild bustards.

24. Thus you see the sediment on their shoulders,
Flakes from long accumulation and downfall.

25. Like remnants of adobe, cast away
From the sheepfold, broken pieces with cracks.

26. Or like a wounded carcass, the mangy
Camel has become consecrated ground.

27. I have avoided them in favor of a garden
Whose keepers conceal some of its overflowing produce.

28. We are a people whose nature is forbearance
When fear touches those who attack in haste.

29. A help to the lowly in the time of distress,
Dreaded by those who roam afar.

30. No people withheld their full measure from us,
Nor men who are content with pretended blindness.

31. Among them are violence, if patience is not shown,
And among them are pardoning and overlooking.

32. Whoever seeks to confront them will find them
Protectors of the weak from every aggressor.

33. Good-natured folk when they dread
Transgression, we walk to judges of renown.

34. So ask the people, if you do not know,
And if you wish, between us stands a judge.

35. Have you deemed us a hostile tribe,
Seeking glory from men in times of distress?

36. How many a foe, hardy and bold,
Whom we left as flesh on hooked poles!

37. And we brought the horses back to them
When war, devourer of mankind, was kindled among them,

38. With courage which makes disasters recoil
And a thrust like the blow of a mare in labor,

39. Flashing, with the spittle continuing
On it like the fruit of myrobalan.

40. War tried them, so they tasted
The might of one who exterminates foes without relenting,

41. Every one devoted to death was laid low
By the sword, like the labor of every child bearing.

42. It does not refrain from destroying the foe
And the base one is cured by shedding his blood.

43. When the laws of death were made pleasant
And death was made often delectably sweet.

44. By the blades which left no limb unsevered
And the deadly strokes rising with any rising.

45. Such are our ways when the fight grows hot
And the period of inveterate hate grows long.