1. When asked, “Which people are the finest tribe,

    and the most steadfast on a day when its marching hosts stand unconcealed?”

  2. Surely the sons of Laʾm ibn ʿAmr are a noble stock

    that has risen above a height whose watchpoints none can reach.

  3. Their lineage and their faces lit for them

    the darkness of night, until its piercing star strung the onyx beads.

  4. They have an assembly where none are barred from bounty

    when the quest for kindness leaves its rider in a barren land.

  5. And I am of that people who are themselves—none other—

    when one lord among them dies, his peer rises in his place:

  6. stars of a sky—whenever one star vanishes,

    another appears, to which its fellow stars repair.

  7. Wherever they have been, there has always been among them a man acknowledged as lord;

    death itself goes wherever his battalions march.

Sol 5.6