1. The tricks of fate befall the trickster,
And the homes of this life are soon in ruins.

2. The heedless were preoccupied amassing wealth,
Forgetting piety, their time fleeting.

3. Bid the world farewell like one departing,
For you have been called to journey on.

4. You were not meant for permanence, O world,
Ever changing like fleeting shadows.

5. Surrounded by every misery, O world,
Mixed with every affliction.

6. You once had my devotion, O world,
Then left me destitute, with doubts and regrets.

7. You have changed my youthful vigor, O world,
Into ugliness, thus extinguishing my radiance.

8. The desire to be free of you has grown within me
The tree of contentment, which is now my wealth.

9. Now I see the misguidance and the right path.
Now in you I accept my destiny.

10. I have folded away the train of my vain desires,
And cut your tie from the rope of my hopes.

11. From the turns of time I understand its lessons,
And am aware of days and circumstances.

12. I hold the reins of my soul firmly with guidance,
Having folded the train of vain desire.

13. My thoughts encompass amazing events,
As I go from one state to the next.

14. Since finding contentment, I have never ceased
To see abundance and scarcity as equal.

15. Contentment with sufficiency is true wealth,
While poverty is the essence of poverty.

16. When one is not divinely inspired, desire
Brings but weariness and burdens.

17. When humankind attains lofty rank,
It is coupled with meanness.

18. When one restrains desire with reason,
He attains integrity and excellence.

19. When one bumbles through things recklessly,
He praises the unlawful and blames the lawful.

20. One who clings to hypocrisy will never find
In friendship the taste of intimacy.

21. When matters are weighed by their merit,
Religion is the weightiest in the scales.

22. Your gardens of guidance have become barren through you,
While your gardens of misguidance still bear fruit.

23. Restrain your passions with composure,
And crush your zeal for desire with fetters.

24. Be disciplined by your reason in time,
And by its fluctuations and changes.

25. Thwart with despair the heat of ambitions
That have pierced your reason with glowing embers.

26. Battle your desire if it calls you to temptation;
Battle it there with every fight.

27. If you are no hero when passions flare,
Beware of facing the stands of heroes.

28. Silence your tongue from malicious gossip,
And beware the consequences of words.

29. When you restrain your desire from its wantonness,
You free it from the prison of every fetter.

30. When you settle into guidance and obey it,
You are clothed in the garb of righteous deeds.

31. When you harbor ambition you don a garment of humiliation;
Ambitions are the source of degradation.

32. If you swim in the sea of desire,
It will cast you into what is said of you.

33. When you loosen your tongue’s restraint,
It casts you into what is said of you.

34. When thirsty for piety, you are given to drink
From a fresh, sweetly-flowing source.

35. When tested by begging, offer your face,
To the gracious and generous.

36. The generous, when they promise you reward,
Give it freely, without delay.

37. One who begs does not compensate with his tongue,
Even were he to gain riches by asking.

38. When asking accompanies bestowal,
Asking prevails, and bestowal declines.

39. I am amazed by one certain of his death
Yet walks with the strutting gait of one pretentious.

40. Choose the pure minds, for they are the treasure of treasure,
The mine of superiority.

41. Befriend the generous, for they are the people of virtue,
And beware the love of the base.

42. Be reconciled with those who oppose you,
And those who exclude and deprive you,

43. And if you do so, then persist in that.
One is not complete in his words,

44. Until he beautifies his words with deeds.
Often the lowly are exalted by their deeds,

45. While the lofty and high fall.
What lessons for the reflective and virtuous

46. In this time, this empty era!
How many feeble minds have adorned their minds

47. With what they have guarded and heeded of proverbs!
How many men seem important, but if you unveil them,