1. Had it not been for your genius, youth would not have wept for you
You are the one afflicted, while we are afflicted because of that

2. If your people wanted you to die, it is only
Because they had hopes that died with you

3. They mourned them, and your life's companion was its life
And time itself eulogized it the day it eulogized you

4. No glimmer remains on the horizon of hopes
Except those the death shrouded when it shrouded you

5. O soul this garden, your garden, is now barren
You turned away from it, and did not reap its harvest

6. No sooner had it approached harvesting by your hands
Than your hands let it slip away

7. O spreader of generations from their sheaths
In Baalbek then will be your reward

8. You awakened them after centuries of ruin
Only for you to sleep, while your ruin remains awake

9. You rebuilt what time had destroyed, and returned
Your kingdoms upon their thrones as kingdoms

10. And returned the temples standing tall again
Each with its zodiac signs aligned above

11. You built alone what nations spent
Their lifetimes building, only to destroy

12. These like those, citadels with their domes
And statues and carvings, so similar

13. As if the Romans and the Greeks had gathered
All their stones for your citadel

14. As if you enslaved those who once enslaved
Leaving no god outside your dominion

15. The gods they carried in their friezes
Could not touch your kingdom in the heavens

16. You carried them and their temples, alone
No citadels of Baalbek carried but you

17. And nationalized the cradle of Sene, displaying it
To nations of the West flocking there

18. Nations that saw wonders in the most wondrous sign
Baalbek, nudging it with your right hand

19. As if envy itself murdered you, yet you Eastern
Star, if only the West could have ransomed you

20. Destiny would have stamped out, had you not been
Of us, the planets beneath its shoes

21. My longing for Lebanon after you, still
As the stillness of your heart, unable to stir

22. No lover in its meadows frolicking, no
Moon to show it his smiling face

23. No beauties but those you left behind
Weeping, and every lad weeps for your loss

24. And the bereavement in the scholarly institute
Where youths contract it, comrades of your youth

25. Strewing prose upon it like the teardrops
They strewed, precious elegy for your death

26. My neighbor, the great eagle by his grave
Did Hugo pass by it, crying for you?

27. If he missed your poetry, your peer, I gave him
Verses to console the loneliness of your bier

28. You left Baalbek and died far from us
And far removed was our fate by your leaving

29. Of your works or ruins here we have
No remnants, so we make do with your memory

30. Such is Lebanon's fortune, for every lad
Of sublime principles is far removed like you