1. For you all the good, have I forgotten our distant youth?
So time will repay you with estrangement like your estrangement, or with distance.

2. Or does love still remain, unchanging? We will increase for you,
Beyond what you were accustomed to, our affection and love.

3. God has aimed at separating lovers through His name,
And tormented through separation the estrangement and distance.

4. I love those whose love has been my affliction,
So how truthful was that impassioned love and how much it gave.

5. Its anguish is pleasurable as it passes me by,
Oh, would that I never had tasted agony or bliss.

6. Would that I were free of passion, never having been possessed,
By beauty, nor known happiness or love.

7. Whims carried youth to old age,
Without fulfilling a religion or keeping a promise.

8. Passion is satiated when its people are denied reunion,
And is sweetest when it is most unattainable.

9. I yearn for the past, though the days have carried it far,
Why am I not casting it away like the past?

10. A soul's relationship that the passion of love enabled,
And a strange, unparalleled agony that I see no equal to.

11. I love the generous youth who sought wealth,
But when he saw the face of wealth, he sought praise.

12. And I hate those whose souls do not seek praise,
Nor harbor true affection or love.

13. Your friend who remains as long as fortunes abound,
But bites with his fangs in time of dire straits.

14. May God disfigure whoever shows affection to a villain,
Yet harbors in his gullet the opposite of what he has shown.

15. Leave the resentful man to heal through my absence,
For the absent one's absence is nothing but a gift bestowed.

16. Would that God never grants me but nobility whenever
My envious enemies hope I'll be laid low.

17. As long as this one, whose blissful face I behold, lives for me,
I will never lack in fortune or happiness.

18. Oh Lord, one day for the virtuous Hamidi
I saw - through him - the bounty of my father given freely.

19. One morning, I saw glory being built, its pavilions
Erected for him, and the heights stretch out their necks.

20. And an exalted nobleman seeking livelihood anxiously,
Whether to the hardship of living or venturing out in the morn.

21. He has aged, only increasing in ignorance,
Rags, unable to cease being a beggar wandering all day.

22. Turning aside from the army, yet heading toward its flank,
Never a leader of men, nor having aimed for glory.

23. So when he saw the horses of death galloping
Toward him, he crawled away like snakes and crawled on.

24. But when he strove for survival, and his soul
Was certain of good, reassured and guided aright.

25. The glance of a man glanced his way - had it glanced
Toward a mountain, it would have crumbled in fright.

26. Upon the back of a sturdy steed, swimming
On four extended forelegs, its neck upright.

27. He was accustomed to being mounted for every lofty goal,
And determined success would always butt through.

28. So he hired him out to Samarra - had he extended his reigns
Charging the barricade, it would have penetrated the dam.

29. Yet he fell sideways to the ground, while his soul
Rejoiced at his vanquisher's rancor and hatred.

30. So I said to him: "O wolf, fear no harm,
For your vanquisher has felled the rose-colored lion before you."

31. "It is but a carcass whose shame is little
When the master subdues the one who subdued lions."

32. The best thing you saw was a sea bordering
Another sea - we praised one and the other returned praise.

33. Please, tell me truthfully - by God - which was the sea?
Or the palm of my father Salih's hand that was more plentiful?

34. The abundant clouds pour beautifully to the land,
But they did not pour to it as he poured.

35. The best of all creation walked upon it,
Sweetening it until its soil turned to musk.

36. And he sheltered the elite youth who sheltered
The glorious virtues of the one he sheltered.

37. When the light gifts a breeze from its gentle wind,
Then from his honor the breeze he gifted blows.

38. Contemplate the rivulets as if they are
Adorned with bracelets, adorned with pearls.

39. Their flowing has enriched us over musk whenever
It undulates, and its meadows make us forget roses.

40. Gardens graceful as the prince's nature,
The earth's lips moistened by its freshness and coolness.

41. As if singing nightingales were set free in its land,
So every singing girl cast down her necklace upon it.

42. O my father Salih, my soul is your ransom from harm,
Though little can ransom, and great is the one ransomed.

43. Enjoy your world which you have filled
With such security, it has become a protected sanctuary.

44. Beyond this praise, I composed this response
To gleam, peerless in brilliance, under the dew.

45. It has taken on the radiance of this plain's splendor,
Adorning itself with your beauty, no less and no more.