1. I realized my fortune in the winter of my life
Like the dawn gleaming from the darkness

2. So I returned from my life to the crack of youth
And discarded my asceticism and scorned my pebbles

3. And I stood in Lebanon among its gazelles
Pouring my youth asking them where are my mothers

4. I left her on the day of farewell aggrieved
And peeled off from our kisses my kisses

5. And I adhered to the ethics of old age and its oppression
Disguised against my youth with my sighs

6. Defending the complaint of sensations, preventing
My innermost heart if it dares to cross this

7. And the star watches the tear of my eye alone
And the night alone hears my moans

8. I did not expect to return and for the wish
Its pleasures, and live after my death

9. As for those who returned my madness to me
Their lives are ransomed by my life

10. They were kind to me and esteemed my worth, and I
Am nothing but their slave and they are my masters

11. Were it not for them, the transgressor would have overcome
My status and tied my hand, my eternal enemy

12. A fate that changes against the literate, so I do not see
Among its riders toward me except misfortunes

13. And my crime is that I wore armor against it
That protects my chest from stabs

14. And Allah knows that I did not debase
My highborn literature or disgrace my art

15. I spent the days of youth and held my banner
Among the meadows, a banner of good deeds

16. And I kept the covenant of my loved ones, inclined
To loving my people over loving myself

17. And I adhered to redeemed Lebanon at a time when
None adhered to it in its afflictions except its redeemers

18. If I had no fire in its ember
My eulogy would be the carrier of embers

19. Or if I had no bow and arrows for it
I composed my mind with eloquent words

20. The snow from Lebanon is the coast of my soul
And its cedars are the place of recitation of my verses

21. I unleashed upon it the free daughters of my thought
So they roam bound by its passion like indentured ladies

22. He leads them like captive girls belonging to him
While they to others are defiant and disobedient

23. Those brides wore no jewelry
Except what was forged in its meadows of blossoms

24. They rise and set on the outskirts of its cedars
Like houris overlooking from heavens

25. And lightning below their foreheads and shoulders of moons
Below the landing places of steps

26. I swear by them, and they are the rhymes, that if I swore
By them I would be more faithful than swearing by Al-Lat

27. If Lebanon after God were not the beloved of
My heart, poetry would not have been my ritual prayer

28. And if I complain, then I complain to
Lebanon, I have not wasted my breath

29. Poetry in other than the literate is a loss
Like clarified butter melting in manure

30. I have experienced the people of time, but I have not found
Except the literate to bring misfortune upon himself

31. He suffers so others may prosper, willingly making himself
A soul that brings back the soul to the dead

32. A soul flowing upon parchments whenever
The ink flows upon the pages with it

33. A soul overlooking the centuries as if it is
The dawn splitting the darkness

34. It is a magical power that confined the eras of
The universe between a parchments and an inkwell

35. It marched against the states of tyrants, so it demolished
Their pillars and walked upon the summits

36. I ransom with my soul a group of its people
Who tolerated my harm and cooled my agitation

37. They are the people of my affection, their shadows are no enemy
For their shadows are six directions of good

38. Were it not for their risings, I would have faced in
Lebanon only the vanguards of catastrophes

39. And my hearing would have received from its echo
Only the wailing of mourners and lamenters

40. And the soft flowing brook would have come from euphoria
While comforts are lost and gone

41. O brothers, you clad me in your armors
And through you I found my defender and my spears

42. Your noble ways revived me, the hope which
I abandoned and saw only my remnants

43. You found me while the road had numerous
Obstacles, so you reduced my stumbling

44. And you brought together the scattered resolution from the wish
So it blew toward me after dispersion

45. And I was betrayed, I do not find life a misfortune
And I returned praising my wakefulness and my sleep

46. Whoever's brothers are lions, he will not
Fear foxes in the deserts

47. My gratitude to you is the gratitude of the loyal one to the hand
That returned the soul to him after death