1. Ask the prince, and my soul is ransom for the prince,
Has he seen in the West a river like the Nile or meadows like the Fayoum,

2. Or a sky as brilliant as the luminous East,
That shaded a land like it with drizzle?

3. And has he seen the pure brooks embracing,
A meadow, if you pass through it, exudes honey,

4. Has he sensed ruins that tell him,
Of a glory like that of this East that has withered?

5. For Egypt’s pyramids tell him about it,
And Baalbek bears witness to him forever,

6. A glory whose throne time has folded, but time
Has not been able to fold its pillars.

7. The long nights extended to it a thieving palm,
Took it away, then extended a giving hand to the happy West, even if

8. The West had not inherited the East’s glory, it would not have prospered.
So the West increases in blessings day after day,

9. While the East increases in sorrows day after day.
Greed hovers over its pastures in droves,

10. Like I saw over the barren land the locusts,
Voracious, neither satisfying their hunger through it,

11. Nor harming it with their nibbling.
Awake while we sleep, no executioner to wake us,

12. With a drawn sword among us, and no stabbing of outstretched hands.
The wolves are emboldened by the greed of our neighbors,

13. So they disdain the old lion who has shed his mane.
Even the cranes walk proudly, so they frighten

14. The eagles in their valleys while they are alone.
They quarrel, but have no awe of the eagles,

15. The army of cranes wages war united.
The East has not declined from its days of joy

16. Except through the cowardice of leaders who envied it.
If not for the remaining hopes in some of them

17. Like the prince, his soul would have forsaken his body.
A scion who struck with their glory tent pegs

18. In Egypt, and planted with Lebanon for it tent poles.
A spark from the swords of knowledge, whenever it struck

19. The darkness of doubts, it startled them with guidance.
At the side of the noble Abbas, builder of glory,

20. How many times have the hands of Abbas severed necks with it!
His morals have taught the West, obliging it

21. To keep its swords sheathed on the banks of the Nile.
The West applauds Egypt whenever the doubt of time

22. Rebels, and the hand of time becomes hostile.
Muhammad went to the meadows of Syria,

23. As the dew goes and returns at dawn.
Through it his hand shone, so if the eye of the envious looked at it,

24. It would not be safe from blindness.
It is a hand that gives generously with the jewels of expression, writing

25. As it gives generously with scattering pearls when they are threaded.
A testimony to the loftiness of Syria sufficient

26. From its script, and the judgement of the witness suffices us.
The East hoped through it to shed the garb of morals

27. To clothe itself thereafter in new clothes.
The East, in its affairs it was declining,

28. And the East, in its affairs it hopes to rise.
A stand he took in Columbian soil, wearing

29. From its glory a cloak.
Surrounding him from the outskirts of Syria, a garrison,

30. Which if it lightened, no other neck would wish for a necklace but it.
So he was the proudest of the proudest of their people,

31. And was the most glorious of those whose affair is glory.
We yearned for Syria until its emigrant visited it,

32. For the beloved is visited wherever he is found.
He turned affectionately to bring closer the Syrian,

33. As he brings closer to himself the Syrian from afar.
For he saw in him in Egypt a supporter,

34. And in other than Egypt he saw in him a supporter.
Syria and Egypt are but one homeland,

35. A single thread the verses have singled out.
The doubts of time have tied no rope between them,

36. A rope of love was tied before time tied it.
Their slopes are covered by the braids of gazelles, and

37. Their brothers the lions have followed in their tracks.
Every doe that tread with her hoof

38. Left in her footsteps the imprint of its knots.
Accompanying them are brothers whose honor

39. No disgrace has touched, nor has any calamity in time shaken them,
From a people whose souls consider lightly

40. Parting with life, rather than reject an embrace or a covenant.
By God, neither Egypt nor its neighbor Syria became desolate

41. Except by the death of the intimate of mankind and the lions.
Oh valley of grapes, how much affection

42. Flowed from the breast of Lebanon kindling passion!
And how many swords poured out in you shining

43. Having left behind in Columbian soil their scabbards!
In the care of the Nile are brothers of ours whose chests

44. Are armored by the pleasure of Abbas.
Cared for by my brother Abbas, an overseer

45. Who stays awake even if watching over them exhausts him.
Whoever lives in Syria, life is not dear to him

46. If Muhammad calls him to a day of redemption.
A youth who tells us about him as-Sulaym, and who

47. Other than as-Sulaym, if he relates, is to be trusted.
His qualities have delighted me, so I rose through them

48. As a poet singing in the gardens of poetry.