1. With a supple grace my youth once kindled
As lightning kindles through the gloom its sparks

2. My eyelids, Raqa's, weep with many tears
When nightly halts the litter and its poles

3. Ah, of your life, dove, tell me, inform me
How is the sand-hill and its shrubs and stones?

4. Have they breathed in my breathing its plants' scents
Or bloomed in my tears their many flowers?

5. Or is it but my fancy in my heart
Which made its home in a broken abode?

6. It kept the troth. What troth and vows tossed to the winds
Were ever torn by passion's sentence down?

7. How can consolation come? Without that fawn
Among the roes what can the lion choose?

8. Of horses, its steeds; of weapons, their keen blades;
Of lances, their points,-what can the choice prefer?

9. The horsemen stand around his resting-place
As round its pivot moves the circling star.

10. They bared for him their Indian blades before
We thought them very eyelids and eyebrows

11. The pennons tossed like turbans to and fro
In mourning for that face of moon in clouds

12. Let him love of a truthful friend profess
To him if he submit, or wayward prove.

13. The double coat of mail his form once wore
Upon the day of battle and its dust

14. He is not dead except in hope to meet-
Without it life itself would nought avail.

15. God guard his resting place and burial!
May he find quiet resting in the tomb!