1. My heart, though I've not seen you happy,
Why, my heart, do you grow more ardent?

2. When hopes were renewed, you were not
But wretched and sorrow-stricken, my heart.

3. Why do you not rest? When gloom befell you,
You hoped for great hopes of every kind.

4. And mighty longing for the meeting shook you,
So you remained dancing joyously in your enclosure.

5. And great hope gave you eloquence
And mighty longing increased your flame.

6. O quarter of my heart that melted in its sorrows
So that I had no heart, but many hearts,

7. O God, in you, my brother, and in your glances
Sweet northwards and southwards,

8. My heart is before you, O most faithful brother, so if
You examined my heart you would find it wondrous,

9. Gathering consent and anger in its depths.
So wonder at my heart, content and wrathful!

10. But it is a heart that obeyed so swayed
And went to you, consenting and answering,

11. A heart that, when meeting you, lived in bliss,
And when separated from protecting you, lived mournfully.

12. O hour of meeting, how I sacrifice myself for you, an hour
That gathered youth and ecstasy and a beloved!

13. O my bliss in my misery and my torturer
In my joy, whether the years be long or short,

14. Take pity on my suffering because of your alluring charms, it
Has made me alternate between joy and torment.

15. O my inspirer of the magic of poetry at dawn
And my teacher of the language of life at sunset,

16. And purifier of my sinful soul, and reviver
Of purpose, and my teacher of propriety,

17. And warrior in the way of God, waging His proper war,
And revealing, whether times be difficult or calamitous,

18. I still, during tribulations, my brother, stand firmly
And steadfastly live the life of your love,

19. The memory of meeting makes me bend happily,
Returning to me the happiness of playing joyously,

20. And the memory of separation makes me bend plaintively,
So I shed copious tears.

21. And thus is life: if it gives you bliss
And consent, it gives you its advance and tribulations in equal shares.

22. addled even if modesty appears
For modesty to be blemishes and faults,

23. I marvel at you when the people see you wearing
Dignity while youth clothes you in pallor,

24. And were they to know you, their wonder would cease
At what appears reserved and strange.

25. You wasted your life fearing and reflecting
And spent your life coming and going.

26. And I see life as paltry,
So I rewarded it with disdain and scorn.

27. But I complain of myself to you, for
My soul has been corrupted, and souls would have been more pure because of me.