1. With blades and spears, yet gently reproaching;
With praise, but for the lofty and noble;

2. Terse lines from metres like gems
Unpolished by the hand of an arranger -

3. My thoughts were occupied with praise
Of the Victorious, counting it a duty;

4. How excellent to frolic with memories of him,
Even if my heart roves amongst the slim swords!

5. In everything patrician of his equipment
There is a yearning lover’s link;

6. When his steeds’ chargers presented themselves,
I forgot the gentle roes;

7. And when his swords glinted one day,
I was oblivious before the lightnings’ smiles;

8. If his blades’ meadow shone in the night
I was reminded of the blossoms of the dim stars.

9. I see you, O full moon, challenging the days
Of time that no repenting century has challenged;

10. If you descend on your foes you find them
Shattered by your decisive thoughts;

11. And God has resolved - the night of Saturday dawned
To reveal its morn with a smiling face;

12. The keen edge finds it easy to defend rectitude
By encountering thin swords and arrows;

13. The breadth of earth was folded in half a night
As if you were a phantom visiting a sleeper’s eyes,

14. So that the veteran steeds take you flying as if
Their hooves were a bolt of lightning;

15. You sheathed the sword so it were in darkness
A spectre or a hidden secret;

16. You outsped the morning breeze when you saw
It reaching the gradations of bliss;

17. I feared that it would whisper to them
Of your good fortune, whether zephyr or breeze;

18. No sooner had the sabre’s nostrils snuffed the dawn
From the band except with spears in their snouts;

19. I pelted them with long arrows and above
Were clubs that only clubs can interpret;

20. If they clutched the darkness’ hem I thought them
Evildoers torn by their fellow evildoers;

21. You’d think them in their thickets silent, yet between them
Speech with the tips of brandished spears;

22. You’d assume Bihram and Yūsuf a pair
Of strategists no fanciful notion occurred to;

23. The two heaped much rubbish and their selves
Were torn by the rubbish of a deluded dreamer;

24. And the Merciful allotted between them woes
With what they did, and God is the most just of divisors;

25. This one is left with captivity, need and abasement
While the other gets killing, separation’s agony;

26. And they had thought wishful thoughts in ignorance
Of the one they met from the rabble of non-Arabs;

27. So when the two armies met at daybreak they
Gnawed their fingers, what loss with their sires!

28. And the full moon of Rudayn showed them at dawn
An army like the surge of the agitated sea;

29. As if the kindling of mirrors in the night of their polishing
Were planets in a section of the darkening night;

30. As if the gleam of white swords in his flanks
Were lightning bolts moving in a brooding cloud;

31. And he sent them like eagles swooping down
Driving pigeons towards a flock of doves;

32. He rammed them with the strike of slamming steeds
Splitting them with the slam of pounding chargers;

33. Aid and fervour rose in them while they
Were between a rout and pursuer;

34. The champions prevented any arrows visiting them,
A torrent of calamities streaming;

35. In their horses wheeling, quarrelling, and by them
A piercer and smiter with spears and the well-tested;

36. So I left them in the district like prone corpses
As if remnants of harvest, standing straw;

37. I scattered with the sword’s edge what the spears had composed
Of necklaces and bracelets;

38. And I overtook them while the earth spread boundlessly
And made them like a ring’s setting;

39. And they became while envying their good fortune
Hopeful of a pitying pityer’s mercy;

40. And I departed with honour unblemished
Though the sword’s edge does not treat gently;

41. And when I saw the people terrified of havoc
Their faces between joy and gloom,

42. I pounced on the army with the army and its
Cackling was lifted from frightened skulls;

43. I charged them a Persian charge
And tore up the hem of crowded crisis;

44. I lit then war’s fire and warmed myself
With resolve pacing its blazing embers;

45. I engaged it openly with a generous soul
That refuses violation and holds the noble souls precious;

46. Sufficed by God’s protection that supported you
And the malady God cured through your healing hand;

47. And many a distress which, but for the radiant Abū Nujaim
Would have been agony in the eyes or a slit in the cheeks -

48. An impasse you revealed whose knotted twine
Continued unravelling the tangled knot!

49. And mighty affairs for which you faced its density
Without cease preserving from horrid enormities

50. Summoned for a matter that none should summon but his offspring
When reverence includes the Hugo’s reins -

51. You met the Thaqīf when he approached to take
The wishes whose standards no erectors erected tall;

52. And the sublime king received him with might
So that on the morrow he settled removed from its glory;

53. Nor did the two armies part without his head
Inclining on a slender branch, delicate;

54. His supporters backing whatever distressed him
While his body is the eagle’s banquet;

55. That host was merely spoils for Badr
Rather, munitions for defeats;

56. Gallant who terrifies the lion in every tight spot
And whom divine aid accompanies in every strait:

57. A knight whose spear the nights’ hands failed to bend
So their hands got used to the rigid non-Arabs’;

58. The brother of resolve, his daring ever made him keep
Valour of attack and governance of prudence;

59. You see him on the morrow of war the first horseman
To charge, and in days of peace the last to rest;

60. He gave freely of the magnificent hands, excelling
And immortalised recollection of the splendid exploits -

61. Conversations of patience, audacity and attainment
Reviving memories of ages long elapsed;

62. We forget thereby the tales of Qays ibn ‘Āṣim
‘Amr ibn Mādī Karb and Ḥātim al-Ṭā’ī!