1. No, for yearning and for flaming heart,
None who lived since you left was true to faith.

2. How can I endure to see you shrouded?
For whom shall I shape my dirge of praise:

3. Your kin, or yours, or for all humankind,
Or for all time, or this November's folk?

4. Solomon died and passed, and with him died
Fair constancy and grace of high estate.

5. Bear him not on your necks - he scarce would brook
The honor that you did him while he lived.

6. Leave him to float upon the stream of tears
That bears him on to gardens sweet with air.

7. By God, if once his boughs that bear him felt,
Since first they touched him, they'd turn fresh again for any seer.

8. A nature like the moon in splendor, or
A garden, or a blossom, or wine, or pure

9. Clear water; and a face that, if it mingled
With darkest night, the lovelorn far apart

10. Would still complain that it was hidden from him.
His winding sheet is woven of decency,

11. Generosity, and brave endurance. And his virtues,
Did we not fear to blaspheme, were those the Prophet had

12. the night he made his way to heaven from us. His resolves
Put to shame whims of youths, of time and enemies.

13. You've paralyzed poetry since you left, made vain
The art of verse and seasons of the poets.

14. Pearls beyond all price that once we strung no longer
Come to our call with necklaces of praise or pleasure.

15. Only the weeping eye of some pure bard
Brings you the elegies of El-Khansa.

16. Since you went from us we've yearned for earth to hide us,
And him who had but one life set his heart on a grave.

17. Comfort your heart, though little it can he comforted,
And tell El-Abaza's folk the little left them of my solace.

18. In Paradise their precious one's a guest
In the pavilion of the noblest of the noble.