1. Did a caller weeping in the morn, listening,
And a phantom gliding from Nahrawan set you thinking,

2. And a woman saying ‘My family looks to your support,
So sit not there while your means are shrinking!’

3. I said to her, ‘Enough! A help will come to you.
I scent the perfume through the doors of kings.’

4. When baseness is met with welcoming smiles,
The tribe of the abased are fawning things.

5. If my fortune show me no open face,
Byway and highway are still my field.

6. Once I visited a nobleman, at dawn
Finding a circle of people expectant, humbly kneeled,

7. And when we met, his open-handedness outran
My praise – the hands of askers spread wide reveal.

8. And sincere men endowed me with their quality,
Poems – I have no intercessor but these!

9. A shower, when its lightning flash becomes visible,
As the young lamb’s coat showed beneath his knees.

10. If need casts down her rope, I mount my steed
Whose only gear’s a halter of plaited thong.

11. A man whom praise has made wealthy rides back
From market, pride lengthening the camel-train along.

12. No riches lost have made men losers
But only riches which the mean man kept close-fong.

13. On the planks of rule awe of you remains
And linked mail shirts over the forearms jutting long.

14. Truth from his face splits the battle-din apart
And whiter shows than iron beneath the whetstone’s song.

15. If the mean man hoards money, his hoards
Are sin and coats of mail about him throng.

16. It holds musk now, instead of vipers,
Yet is but the scent of blood outpoured headlong.

17. It goes abroad with blessings and returns with raids
So you alternate between new grass and decayed.