1. The ruins have beguiled me away from myself
And that they have not burdened me to endure

2. And that I am but a remnant of the first adventurers
Perchance the tent-pole may prevail upon the toil of pitching

3. Grey hairs, and I have not yet reached thirty
The coming of a guest to a niggardly host of ills

4. Who turns his hearing away if the camel brays,
And says not, though the live coal fall: "Care!"

5. As though when he alighted in haste
Black growth that hoariness has entirely overgrown

6. He brings anxiety and departs with death
So alas if he tarries and woe if he departs

7. A substitute for youth but no substitute
Swiftly the hide was incised and thickened

8. Will it avail me in the valleys and hills
To extend the water-skins of the docile camels

9. For lads whom open spaces have inured
To drink their water from the bowl

10. They wrap themselves in coverings of sloth at night
And flash their shanks bare of entangling robes

11. If they are summoned to the raiding and the sublime words
You would think their arms were rotten palm-fiber

12. They leave behind traces of raids uneffaced
From every spittle-lathering mouth, as the hyena mumbled

13. Hoping in her who bore them hearing without end
"Thus," says he who beheld them in fright, "the raider neither blind nor lame!"

14. Every day I hamstring the hyena
And eat with the fox the entrails of camels

15. I demolish what the brindled lizard and jerboa build
Among the tracks of the grouse and the sand

16. Wrapped in the cloak of striped Yemen cloth and the mantle
Viewing with the jackal of flaming tail

17. And vanishing with the darkness and the whelp
Exposing myself to livelihood while earning a living is harder

18. And tight-fistedness if it be said "Give!"
Restore what the days have given you pure and limpid

19. And what disasters have stripped you, discard
While you remain squatting upon the saddle-skins of camels

20. Lingering each day over departing
Whoever shuns raiding will not be given largesse

21. Your life has passed while you are occupied
Venture upon the terrors if you are a man

22. And attain with the points of spears what none attained
Whoever seeks glory without the sword earns shame

23. Press on toward glory, even if on all fours
And escape disgrace as the hero escapes

24. He who does not weaken after it, no anguish for him!