1. By your lives, O dwellers of the mother of towns
Your love was never false or made up

2. I yearn for your abodes, from which
Paradise itself came, and over which flowed Kauthar

3. Alas, what dwellings and meadows they were
Where the gazelles grazed, prey to lions

4. If the beautiful ones swayed their slender waists
They would sway their braids, dark as the night

5. Look with your eyes, do you see anything but
A fawn who hunts lynxes with its eyelashes?

6. Or a wild lioness lurking, baring
Its sharp teeth to tear its prey asunder

7. God is greatest! How much they grazed, and who saw
Those lynxes and lions declare "God is great!"

8. In my soul there is a fawn whose song, when fate frowns
Revives the eyes though kin may be harsh

9. It rivals the radiant sun at dawn
In beauty, when it unveils itself from its veil

10. My heart never asked to love his rosy cheek
Until I was pierced by love's green arrows

11. The critic chided me long for my love of him
"Won't you listen?" he asked. I said "Do you not see?

12. He who made hearts tender for his beauty
Melting, though he never bought or traded hearts

13. No, by Him who seduced minds with his beauty
My heart never doubted its love for him, nor strayed

14. I parted from him unwillingly, and ardently wished
To meet him, while patience's reins were severed

15. I know not which grief is worse for me
Longing's pangs, or parting's agonies

16. Parting from one I love, or leaving my dwellings
Both are flames scorching my heart that blaze

17. By God, my days in Mecca and youth
Bring musk to my love that wafts its fragrance

18. Of all time, I crave but an hour from them
Even if I had to buy it or barter for it