1. His radiance appears before palm meets hand
Nothing but glad tidings is the radiance of generosity

2. A generosity which circulates among people on land and sea
Thus, though my tongue praised my friend, it reached not my heart

3. I see you succeeding in neglecting rights, which I fear
Will be forsaken by the days

4. If you are of the night of fortune in companionship
Then every evening after it is dawn’s rise

5. Truly, when the names of nobles occur to mind
As they pass through the field one day in thought

6. Those names then retire like war parties
In the moment of victory or defeat

7. If you say you are the sea we say above it
Yet it is unveiled only by pearls

8. If you say you are the sword we say above it
Yet its blade did not avail without victory

9. If you say life is fleeting
You are right but I say you extend life

10. If people are equal in the place of destruction
They are not equal in the place of remembrance

11. If you say Egypt has no equal on earth
God has not enjoined worshippers to Egypt

12. God has apportioned lands their sustenance
Not granted the Nile an allotment of rain

13. They boast about the Nile, but the Nile is adorned
How many rivers has God belted the plain with?

14. Its boundaries from the Nile rounded as if
A mirror, no, but rivers run like an unsheathed sword

15. Thus not women were their men, who prepare
Mirrors, no, but the blades that dash forth