تأبى الصبابة أن تصيخ لعاذل — Al Sari Al Raffa

Passionate longing refuses to heed a reprover,

Or to check the torrents of streaming tears.

He recognized the dwellings at al-Liwa and wept blood;

Indeed, love has differing stations.

And whenever he sees the traces of a departed tribe,

He greets them, saying, 'May you be watered at a wayfarer's return!'

He never comes to himself, as though an archer's breath

Had reached him at dawn, or Babylon's choicest wine.

Yet he ought to recover, now that he has seen

Youth's fellowship driven away by banishing gray hair.

The reproving women met a man bereft of his good sense;

So they shunned one with adorned hair-partings, yet bare of sense.

Hail to you, O ruin, whose decay answered

On the day at al-Aqiq, the questioning of flowing tears.

We go barefoot and dismount, for it is too sacred

To be profaned by a rider or one wearing shoes.

How sweet was its fruit, while its people dwelt

Between al-Udhayb and Riqqat Aqil!

And our desire lay between a white, cutting blade

That quivers from it, and a brown, slender spear.

O chains of lightning that glanced at the earth

Late at night, and festooned its meadow with chains,

You recalled to us the raptures in the shade of youth,

And life in the drowsiness of heedless time.

In days when I hid my passion from a spiteful foe,

Deliberately, and stole my delight from a reprover.

Will the gaze, if I keep it unbroken, ever reach

One whom a visitor's greeting cannot reach?

I speak of the distant land under another name,

And turn from it the reins of a yearning heart.

And I wish the rain would do to its plains

And rugged uplands what the emir does for a hopeful petitioner.

The giver of lithe, budding-breasted maidens, who go forth at dawn

To his petitioners, accompanied by neighing steeds;

And the giver of his precious life to the spears,

With generosity in which he exceeded a giver's bounds.

Abd Allah's swift advance is along the paths of glory,

While false claims vainly race after his excellence.

He bore the debts and sword-belts after him;

And glory is bearing debts and sword-belts.

So Time strokes in him the white blaze of a winning steed,

Which it met, first among the foremost racers.

When he recovered, our hopes rejoiced,

With the joy of the thirsty seeing clear water at watering places;

Or like dark-green slopes whose blossoms were gladdened

By the gleam of the clouds' drizzle and downpour.

After the eyes of tribes had overflowed

In grief for him, and the patience of tribes had ebbed.

His recovery rescued us when, in anguish,

We were drowning; it set our feet on the ridges of the shore.

It arrived, and good fortune was the first to rise,

With its rising, and ill fortune the last to set.

O champion of Wa'il, you are the first lord

For whose eminence Wa'il's little fingers are folded in counting.

And the sword is God's sword; never has it been known

To strike in vain at the meeting of champions.

And the spear was excessive, unjust toward the unjust,

In thrusting, and veered justly away from the just.

And the arrow, as it flies forth, is met

In battle's terror only by one shielding himself with his vital parts.

Your enemies find no respite from you, for they

Face an all-consuming task in fighting you.

Their strongholds looked toward you, yet were no longer

Strongholds once you advanced upon them.

You brought their lofty, towering height level with their ground,

As though you had struck them at dawn with earthquakes.

How many a mighty stroke of yours has eclipsed a renowned man,

And a favor of yours has brought an obscure man to fame!

I was healed when I took up lodging beside your dwelling,

As though I were a neighbor of falling spring rain.

And from your bounty I was watered by five clouds;

Five fingertips showered me generously with them.

So my praises followed one another to you, as though they were

The continuous patterned bands of a Yemeni cloth.

I am a proven horseman in what I say;

So hear a horseman's words from a man on foot.

And many a hint whose fulfillment lies with you

Has received the pouring raincloud's explicit answer.

And whenever you bestow gifts for poetry, I am

The master of poetry, and you the master of bounty.