1. Your favor is a favor visiting and visited
So repeat your kindness, remembered and extolled

2. And tend to the plant you revived
Until it smiles like hopeful youth

3. Choosing the gems of years for trysts
With their delight and joy as harbinger

4. You met me in the second like your first meeting
Umm al-Qura and Tala al-Dhuha at dawn

5. This is the season of peers in glory and
Wealth so perpetuate my celebrated season

6. And I knew you in your distance hoping
I'd never see a time hard to reach you

7. I lingered until you visited me in my place
As if I saw the unseen, seeing clearly

8. You honored me in my village so I was like
A king ruling our cities and frontiers

9. Decreeing and ordaining what I sought aid for
From troops as I wished, without consulting a vizier

10. God, the day I met you adorned
Rejoicing, greeting you gladly

11. A day you prolonged life and a gathering
In which I gained a creek and plateau

12. For religion and life, your gift which
Inspires me to poetry and painting

13. You didn't give me a horse, but rather
A precious crown and magnificent throne

14. I admired the skill of the steed—marveling
And lingered pondering its creation

15. Learning from its adornment and style
For my dispatches lavish ornamentation

16. The Caucasus was ennobled, where my tribe
Was first, as Egypt was gladdened by a tribe

17. And I asked my Lord that my couch
In eternity would be shaded by nymphs

18. Qanbar, however wondrous his works
Is for your sake pardoned his sins

19. Are you aught but the elite of lofty folk
Who championed knowledge and built up civilizations?

20. They did not first hear the Quran
Until they mastered commentary and exegesis

21. And gathered for benefit when Arab
Rulers disputed caliph and emir

22. O you whose rhetoric the sword and its people see
That eloquence is nobler than their affairs

23. Its reader knows not if it shows a conquered
Realm or a guarded, composed scripture

24. It was not honoring poets that you are a poet
Until kings made you an emissary

25. You have with Khosrow what no other intimate has
Or higher, and your esteem suffices you

26. He called you the title you sang praise of
Sparing you a peer among the generous

27. He favored you with love and loyalty
So take the path of victors boldly

28. And threaten his enemy with his enemy
Until he rules all supremely

29. And if invited to peace, accept it
Empower your zeal to build walls around your land

30. Have you seen how Caesar deceived himself
And people when he spread edicts

31. And softened his talk to harden his heart
Then submitted to aggress and tyrannize?

32. Does Caesar wish to rule when enemies
Of Caesar are mountains, seas and wilds?

33. And catches the sea's fill of whales and the wasteland's
Fill of lions, and the sky's vultures

34. And tries dominance on a plain though he
Did not prove firm when the mountains backed him

35. The least excuse of fortresses, their thorns,
When they surrendered to the besieged

36. I grieve for soldiers there—Muslims
Harmed and harming—coerced and oppressed

37. Would that I were among the elite who won victory, perhaps
I would treat a wounded or free a captive

38. For poetry is more effective than Russian swords
In their hearts and breasts having influence

39. Caesar's friend—tell us of him, for we do not
Find one like you expert in affairs

40. You advised him despairing of his victory
Perhaps he'll sheathe his broken sword

41. The Russians do not want conquests like
They demand constitutions for Russia

42. I see counseling kings however harsh
Forbidden and prohibited save for you

43. Had he preferred peace for worshippers to worship safely
You'd be the arbiter among them, thanked

44. Or if sympathy had a place with them
And hearts understood your celebrated ode

45. You described war until you made me see in it
Slaughter and destruction

46. Does one who pities seek peace in the wild
While all remain defiant, enraged?

47. My master, your affection suffices me
None remains boastful and proud over me

48. And I owe you a debt I cannot repay
Though I pave your way with scattered pearls

49. I wet the generous tear so my mouth, as
I scented my breath with it, was perfumed

50. If Qazvin were mixed with some of my flavor
It would flow as a cleansing draught for all people

51. And this poetry around me is enough of a procession
And my soul alone crowd enough

52. So if I visited well, I visited refined
And if I won, I won fiercely jealous

53. If Rudaki returned to its paradise
He'd allow I'm most passionate in fervor