1. The best love is that which escapes decay,
And the lover of glory has a liver that's hardened.

2. The back of the ostrich never bore humiliation,
Nor did it shy away from the nature of the hunt.

3. How can one who faces life raise a family
When he sees wishes barren without children?

4. The youths blame me during hard times,
Yet the sword, when settled in its sheath, makes a clanging sound.

5. I am the blossom in which they take pride,
If turned by the right hand of the critic.

6. I think pure thoughts,
As if my day heralds my tomorrow.

7. Fate has not bound my hand and destiny
To be seized by death before old age.

8. It betrayed me, my ability, though whenever
I sought anything but loyalty, I did not find.

9. After you the camel litters have pined,
The camel litters for the newly arrived and the returning.

10. The night amidst the stars seems
To glimmer with its scattering of pearls.

11. My night in Baghdad gives me no rest,
As if I were watching one with diseased eyes.

12. My sleep is disturbed as if its eyelid
Were being peeled back over an inflammation.

13. I reflect on a condition I prolong
And an action that dyes the lances with my hands.

14. It is for the soul to rouse determination and perspective,
While all action belongs to the body.

15. It is a nap, with its effects,
That has relieved the eye of drowsiness.

16. No swimming woman drives me insistently to you
Until I see the sand dunes rising high.

17. Why do I neither ride faraway nor
Call down upon nearness the egg of the city?

18. I accompany those whose company I do not blame,
Other than the visiting of dew or denial.

19. A young man who saw Time as untrustworthy,
So he confided his secret to no one.

20. He suspected horses, so he tests
The trained one before the race with driving away.

21. In every expanse he leads a riding beast
That the ground pulls like a voracious eater.

22. May God not remove young men who rode
Their purposes and benefited from remoteness.

23. They discarded the covenant of bliss and imitated
Every stingy housefly that is driven away.

24. For their many enemies they said,
“How many in number who cannot be counted!”

25. For me among them are the noblest portions if
Ferocity aids the swords with support.

26. And where is the like of al-Husayn, if the acts
Of the white blades and the lances are made fine?

27. I shine if the riding camels shout for him,
Ransoming the best life with pleasant life.

28. Time has not stripped it of its perfect garment,
And the lion is not scratched off of the liquid pitch.

29. If the sky rained its stars down upon him,
He would not say to the sky, “Enough!”

30. The guest need not ask about his houses,
And the house of the moon is not sought.

31. He saw the antelopes in the thickets leaping
And the horses disabled from the battle.

32. So he unsheathed his swords and made them drink
The gulps of death with their sharpness.

33. Their eyelids would be created and displayed by
The blood of melted metal in new strands.

34. O leader of the horses in their horseshoes,
The plains do not gloat over him with wounds.

35. A despised man ransom you on the day of dispute,
As if he were a bite for the snarling one.

36. And a screaming challenger raising his voice,
So the coats of mail were removed from him.

37. When different sorts of death faced you,
You shackled the sellers of requests with shackles.

38. How often a fright, as if its rising
Were the horses meeting the rising of the lion!

39. You alighted among them solemnly,
While you are the unique, the distinguished hero.

40. You drag your robe in its grounds
While the coats of mail did not pursue it.

41. Your increase in all you were endowed with,
In every security and mobilized day!

42. Every stubborn, straightening neck,
Its vertebrae are free of deviation.

43. And every arrogant, deluded one you glance at
Out of its sheath in firm strips.

44. And a nation above which a coat of mail flows
Like water above a piece of froth.

45. Your rule is by the sword without astrology,
And you are a striker without aiming carefully.

46. By God, a house you erected and gave height to,
Its sovereignty enriched it, needing no columns.