1. Though you were not speaking, speak now,
For speaking to you is not prohibited.

2. Nothing remains but gratitude for your noble deeds,
Great and majestic to the greatest of the great.

3. When a young man's hands attain a blessing,
Its continuance is by the thanks of the blesser lasting.

4. A king who built my glory and bestowed abundant favor,
And heightened my station, my arrows sharpening,

5. And distinguished me with renowned talents,
For which I gave thanks in the abode, thanks of a piercer.

6. Perfection was sealed by him, and his virtue completed
Any lacking merit that was incomplete.

7. The land's roads were paved, and from him
Enemies were taken by surprise, by unleashed horses startled.

8. Aleppo was adorned, and its people
Became like the radiant dawn of bountiful spring.

9. Those branches adorned themselves and shone
With the sweetest likeness of the flawless full moon.

10. The kings' game humbled itself to him and surrendered
In fear of the son of the loud-voiced quail.

11. And they stood in awe of a king whose dwelling's
Shade confers might, the might of one firm and strong.

12. A slayer of souls, when he dons his swordbelt,
Casts belts to his equal, though swordbelts he has none.

13. His skin is insensitive to the harms of time, as though
It were a wind blowing on barren wastelands.

14. He alone encounters the enemy horde, as though
A swarm were swirling round another swarm.

15. Open-handed, blamed for excess in bounty,
So blame increases his excess and bounty.

16. He exhausted treasures, yet ceases not
To empty what his hands can empty.

17. With virtues he erased the mention of the virtuous and described them
As though their most generous one had not been generous.

18. O you by whom the days and their people become good,
The darkness becoming bright with the stars' lights!

19. The generous passed you by and you came last,
Taking the distinction of the earlier distinguished.

20. With noble deeds that erased Hatim's noble deeds
And erased the story of Rabia ibn Mukaddam.

21. So advanced in merit as one delayed,
And delayed in merit as one advanced.

22. With Al-Musharrafiya and Al-Qanna
A house of the exalted, no part demolished.

23. You multiplied my enviers before you, so increase
Their envy! And complete the beautiful, make it complete!

24. Excuse, by your merit, one absent from service,
For I love to serve, whether I serve or serve not.

25. I praise you while conversing in a sitting
Or addressing in a poem at a festival.

26. So my gratitude continues, helpful, with the pulse
That throbs, suspicious with the suspicious.

27. Like a delightful garden whose breeze lingered,
Languorously stirring the melancholy lute.

28. And a band who cut across the desert plains to you
From afar, landmarks above the land's marks raised.

29. With sturdy camels whose lank sides the withered
Wove in the waste, of excellent Jadil stock descendant.

30. They spurred on the steeds to riding, and traced
In the waste a line of letters, a word's parts shaped.

31. So you see in it an eye by the impact of a hoof,
And you see in it a "h" by the impact of a biter.

32. Through you they attained safety from misguidance and resolved
Above the litters, in you the best resolver.

33. And they went, since you sent them from a meadow
Where flowers thronged, and a sea of munificence billowed.

34. They lavished praise, extolling you, and gained
And ransomed you - so you won gain without loss.

35. O you at whose door kings stand and bow down,
Diadems doffing to the turban bowing!

36. You are celebration, you are its lasting bliss -
So blessed be you both, in lastingness blessed!

37. Celebration causes an obligation to fade, but
Celebration must be praised that is not made to fade.

38. So delight in it! And peace unto the safekeeping of forts -
Without your survival safe, no place is safe.