1. New spring has no narcissus, tulips, or roses,
Nor fruits on the tree like gleaming eyes,

2. It's all an image of your feast day, O Paul,
That granted it a feast day.

3. I despaired of life, but when
You called “O my life, return,”

4. I wandered in meadows on the shore of hope;
How long they shaded me!

5. There I felt a heart that strayed
And sought the path of my poem,

6. So it revealed to me its ardors
A poem for the feast of the best chief.

7. It sheltered me with its palms,
Embraced me with its bananas,

8. So I roamed the valley and its streams
That recite verses of eternity.

9. The whisper of the breeze in the vineyards
Like the chanting of the baptized,

10. The cooing of doves over tender boughs
Whispering their Davidic suggestion.

11. There poesy ruled; I was
Empowered over rhyme and meter,

12. I adopted the ode from the breath of its wind
And the song of its singing birds.

13. I left ill omens disappointed,
While I attained the frontier of glory.

14. Rise up master whose pride is in
Knowledge, resolve, highness, and excellence,

15. Fifty years yet no hour of them
Without righteous deeds.

16. What father of a faith are you, whom science honors,
Whose sound view is so right and just!

17.
We've not forgotten how you were for us

18. When we were prey to a tyrant aggressor,
Nor how you were for us when

19. We were like Salih among Thamud.
When status in our land was like

20. Christ's among the Jews,
And caprice was the rope round the neck,

21. Or a pathogen in the vein,
Trampling the breasts of chaste girls

22. Stamping at the limits.
Casting down the mother in the road, while

23. The mother's milk is on the infant's lips.
We've not forgotten how you were to Lebanon

24. And Lebanon in the blackest nights.
If we praise, we praise a master

25. Who was refuge for the sinner and rescuer of the spurned.