1. In ransom for your kindness is the branch of basil and iris—
Far apart are kindness and branches!

2. For me, from your cheek, the soft, and your breast are
Gardens of palm trees, apples, and pomegranates.

3. In ransom for your neck, the neck of a gazelle turning,
For it is for you, from it, the neck of a human:

4. Pure, immaculate from murk—no
Stain of sweat or grease is on it.

5. It is called, for us, the pillar of dawn, confidently,
So the face is from you, and the sun of the horizon equal.

6. A face we compare to the sun—we do it justice—
It is only of light and fire.

7. Polished smooth page from which water slides
When the sweat of your soft cheek flows.

8. In ransom for your eye, the eye of the wild cow sleepy—
Where is the fluttering in the eyelids of fawns?

9. Quiet, unstirring of love, nor
Do they entice what two eyes have enticed.

10. They speak not, yet gazes hear
What mouths do not speak to ears.

11. Beauty has only the weak—so nature gave them
As their armor eyelids black as night.

12. Courage profits them naught in their battles
When set between striker and piercer.

13. And passion seizes the noble’s heart sometimes
In the bloom before the helpless lover.

14. As if it the evident selects the generous for itself
While all are in its grip after times.

15. Dear, ignorance thought it traced its line
To the dear, perilous, lofty, glorious one—

16. Egypt’s noble, prince of the land, its master,
Perfect in beauty and benefaction.

17. Refined of spirit and character, pure of it,
Clearwatered in intimacy and openly.

18. Delicate being for what greatness is in it
Like water’s smoothness in quenching a thirsty one.

19. If the heights called him son of his ancestors
No thousand proofs claimed him against it.

20. Offshoot of Egypt’s honored ancient families
Who attained in glory what towered over Saturn.

21. They built glories, followed armies,
Persevered in glorious feats continuing till now.

22. My protection, Muhammad, and success attends him
In each approach of knowledge and civilization.

23. The Pharaohs of old founded in the land
Egypt’s pyramids—O what a structure!

24. Above them in supremacy and pride he has
Pyramids of glory high as any star.

25. Mother of civilization, Egypt in antiquity,
Never ceasing to be joy of nations and countries.

26. Like a garden including every fruit—
Pairs of excellence and glory, no two alike.

27. The Khedive’s kindness revived it with his favor
Like rain’s pour reviving flowers of a garden,

28. A grower from the vines of pride in it
What dawns of Nisan do not foretell.

29. Its land boasts not of the fecundating Nile
For glory has a Nile within confining a second.

30. Where the height and glory’s vegetation is more lush
Than the Nile’s vegetation watered by tributaries.

31. Where justice has pillars fortified,
And perhaps stood never needing pillars.

32. Where the caravan of knowledge alights, carried
By ships of effort from far and near.

33. Where once the Arabic of nomads struck
Its tents after lessons long ago.

34. And the splendid, gleaming Azhar buttresses it
With strongholds of literature and mystic knowledge.

35. Tongue of a people shepherds of beauty,
And in herding stars most wakeful of watchmen.

36. The tongue almost articulated by
Minds, not tongues, in subtlety and clarity.

37. A wondrous, strange composition in its turns
One would think it the creation of jinn.

38. O spreader of knowledge’s banner fluttering
In a state returned to glory of Adnan,

39. To you I raise a collection adorned
With your name in favors arrayed.

40. A collection of poetry we tailored for you,
Strands of pearls, rubies, coral arrayed.

41. The sun meets the train of water displaying it
Stones of diamond in lights and colors.

42. Still you unite the sum of honors, and in
Praising you every collection is arrayed.