1. If I were to be stricken, I'd have been stricken ere I praised being stricken,
And I'd have won, had the pilgrimage been what I sought,

2. And life would not have turned its back on me, had fate treated me justly as its mount,
It swore it would not increase my merit,

3. My life, except to increase my torment,
So whenever I sensed some harm from it,

4. It kept it up, and initiated for me something strange,
I cast my luck into clever stratagems,

5. But hit naught, and drew not even near,
Be it piety to be blamed, or envied charms,

6. Counted as sins,
Look to the omens, and what they bring,

7. Whenever you wish to see something wondrous,
A hand that brings together water and fire,

8. And you have not joined livelihood with the cultivated,
Would that life had spared me along with my liberation

9. Its hated things, as it spared what was loved,
Or would that my mad nature had gone madder,

10. And I'd been neither tolerant nor reasonable,
O comrade of time, too smug about it,

11. You're blood, so beware the wolf,
Your glances send, out of its loyalty,

12. A summer lightning flash, flirtatious,
Ask it of me, and gauge me by it,

13. For I have killed its people experimentally,
After all my toil and striving,

14. On the ground, until it bore a noble one,
It came with him after long neglect mistakenly,

15. Then intended after that to repent,
It brought the bright dawn of evening revelry

16. That rains on the green fertile earth,
The wine grows pure and pleasing however much it ferments,

17. In beauty, unto its descendants and wholesomeness,
For glory there are some people, and few are they,

18. And in the few you find what is sought,
Like a star, from the perspective of the far-gazing, distant is it,

19. Yet to the eyes, it appears near,
Do not thank the youth for merit,

20. In which he has no noble kinsman participant,
For Ayyub's son only gave largesse

21. In nobility, following Ayyub,
O you clad in perfection, not conceited,

22. You left everyone else clad in rags,
If gratitude forsook a biting tongue,

23. And was before it a vanquished sword,
For you have fettered my tongue, and guided me,

24. With your lengthening it, to its ropes,
I reckoned the number of pebbles, but could not bear

25. To count what I was destined,
With every shining day, aid comes to me,

26. Cooling the heat of its enchaining oppression,
And a blessing moves in its plenitude,

27. Cleaving the arid desert, so it appears verdant,
Its reception shames me, so your eye reckons

28. My smile toward it sullen,
If I wished, I could have rested from its burdens,

29. Had I been wearied by honor,
I was a brother, but you did not cease to lavish me

30. With kindness, until I became a beloved,
So if praise paid a debt of blessing,

31. Or came near paying it approximately,
And the affordable sufficed, then curb a vagabond,

32. Who asks about it, the north wind,
It clings to precious chastity its propagation,

33. And with it, it flies, breezily,
When I build from it the house of friendship, the ears would wish,

34. Had they for it defects,
It abides heard, and suffices however much

35. You substitute for it a gift or endowment,
Count the years, its fasts and feasts,

36. You are gifted recited in it written,
If I built the house from it, the ears would love it,