1. If they told Homer in his slumber
Of your wondrous making, he would regain his life

2. And a flame would fly, ambition soaring
To the highest sphere, once you had Arabized his verses.

3. He wouldn't have thought that the moons of nighttime
Had descended to lend their light to his concerns,

4. If it weren't for Solomon broadcasting pride
With which he revived beneath the soil his remains.

5. The age and its people were ignorant, especially
We Arabs, of his poetry and wit.

6. Be however you wish, O age, for you are
In the era of rhetoric adorning its mirror.

7. You wouldn't be what poetry's art was lacking
Its doctor, no, but reviver of its dead.

8. And if a pulpit were to chant eloquently
You'd be the messenger to the scholars of its voices.

9. Why was money wasted before you
And lives and hours squandered?

10. Pardon, without pay, just to make a nation love
The servants who enabled its lost glory.

11. If they were fair they'd carve their livers
Into an idol representing his guidance for the age.

12. You've dispelled from language's horizon its clouds
And reined in usurpers to rhetoric's throne,

13. And protected its precincts and guarded its treasures,
And warded debauchery off the mind of rhetoric.

14. Your times didn't meet while sternly angry
Tearing hopes from whoever's youth slipped away,

15. Until your excellences' signs appeared like arrows
That went and scattered the flock of desires.

16. You made me love praise though I'd shunned it
Until I loved praising your essence for its essence.

17. With it I congratulate praise that elevated
Its dust, for as long as you keep hunting its beasts.

18. Not every snarler entering the lair is a lion.
It's right for him to violate its sanctums!

19. So the pearl a lad hoards stingily
Until trial reveals his capacities.

20. And so praise is guarded in its towers
Until the praising meet its ballrooms.

21. And if you embodied yourself for me and were its pillar
I'd dress it in gowns provoking its foes.

22. And I'd make my poetry kissing its features
A string of stars adorning its cheeks.