1. My fever revived and prayer revived,
And time assumed both wrists;

2. The dearest of times in the soul were,
Then its time faded and languished.

3. When the company intended leave-taking,
The living bade tears flow and rise;

4. In the abode of passion I let flow my tears,
After the beloved's remoteness, adversity and separation.

5. No trace of the camps remains
Save my tears and time's little.

6. I won't ask forgetfulness for what joy there was;
Far from the lover to seek diversion!

7. Najd did not deserve parting, so let us forget it,
Nor did Fever merit to be filled up.

8. O fault-finders! Here are my tears
Watering in the traces, after you all, the abodes.

9. We halted there, and every friend
With solitary tears of his bade never "Farewell!"

10. I remembered from days of union a light
That from me straightway faded when it shone clear.

11. Like youth-time, it visited but briefly;
Its twilight had no sooner come but was told, "It set."

12. O emigrants! Steadfast before was my patience
In your love - it never failed.

13. Think you, in truth, right to abandon a loving lover?
God forbid and no, never!

14. Or do you suppose it weakness on his part, from favor,
If in passion he has slipped?

15. If people fall away from passion
And leave it, I'll not leave.

16. How forget the days of delight that have passed
With you? Yet from them time is sweetened.

17. Is there some way to that time,
And error, if longing demands, "No!"?

18. If it escapes me, yet my sadness stays fixed
It has persisted binding me since it was "No more."

19. Where are the gazelles of the meadows, so charming,
Amid the perfume and shade of the tamarisk?

20. To it my aspiration and yearning,
Wherever it traveled through the lands and halted.

21. It went from me, though I was happy with it nearby,
Joyful in it, my pillar blazing.

22. Then ask concerning a split from one like me -
After that communion, how can it be right?

23. My heart, how can I address a heart
The day it roamed among the throng and wandered?

24. I'll not approve for it baseness, crouching -
Why did it accept from passion disgrace?

25. With a lightning that stayed gleaming feebly
Like the polished sword in the act of unsheathing.

26. I passed the night while the lightning did not
Cease my tears with its flashing, nor the lightning fill up.

27. In distraction he flung love away, with a body
Wasted since his estrangement wasted it.

28. He ill with the burning of partedness
And separation - without the approach of union he'll not be cured.

29. You who compose rhymes! This is a ode
That in the craft of ode rang pure;

30. It walks proudly over the firmament,
Then from it to you it becomes pouring freely.

31. But he loathsome to me who knows not
The craft of verse, yet pretends guideship;

32. With a ode, when verse wears honor,
It robes its sayer in abasement and meanness.

33. In the arena of verse never titled
A front-runner, no, nor vied in the race.