Sol 5.6

  1. You dyed the cheeks with your lover’s tears,

    and, though joined to him, prolonged your rejection of him.

  2. Will you not shelter him? Alas, have you no pity

    for one whom you made drink deep of bitter grief?

  3. You toyed with his heart and folded away from him

    the carpet of union, choosing promises instead.

  4. Remain joined to him, or treat him fairly—for it is injustice

    and treachery to cast off the lovesick man laid low.

  5. Perhaps you do not know that among us is

    a just imam, a praiseworthy arbiter:

  6. a youth who drank justice in his youth

    and will never stray from justice’s path.

  7. He is the son of al-Dayd, master of every assembly,

    and, when present, the highest of all men of rank.

  8. If your eye beheld him, it would behold a prince,

    awe-inspiring and most worthy to rule.

  9. Did he lend Death some of his deadly force

    and clothe the lions in some of his majesty?

  10. The lions sought to drink of his courage,

    but found it stubbornly impossible to swallow.

  11. The Arabs found him the finest among them in character,

    the noblest and greatest among them in ancestry,

  12. the mightiest, and the truest of shot,

    the most just, and the surest in fulfilling promises,

  13. the foremost in valor when battle rages,

    the most beneficial—and the most envied;

  14. the sweetest-tasting to whoever befriends him,

    and the hardest in mettle to whoever opposes him;

  15. the best guided through the trackless deserts,

    the bravest and the fiercest in ardor;

  16. the loftiest, with the brightest lightning,

    the most startling, with the most terrible thunder;

  17. the most auspicious and the most impregnable as a refuge,

    the most fertile, with the best-watered uplands;

  18. the most ill-omened when evil omens are feared,

    the most fortunate when safety is assured;

  19. the most generous and weightiest in dignity,

    the most lavish in bounty toward the ranks before him.

  20. The emirate appointed him, and he was worthy

    of it, though its governor was still a youth.

  21. His enemies had indeed come to know his courage,

    and submitted before his annihilating terror.

  22. When sleep felled the valiant warriors

    and they passed the night asleep upon their saddles,

  23. while a tall, towering mountain loomed before them,

    and by evening the cold enveloped them like cloaks,

  24. and thirst wore them down until they grew faint

    and they themselves turned wholly from their resolves,

  25. you would see him radiant and smiling, pressing onward,

    unerring in judgment and sound in insight.

  26. He warns them, urges them on, and himself grows eager

    to cross with them the bewildering wastes and deserts.

  27. Then he brings them to water, after there have flown apart in terror

    their hearts, and they have despaired of reaching it:

  28. to a well no guide among them knows,

    on black nights of the month’s moonless dark.

  29. Then morning finds him gazing upon the enemy,

    pledging with firm assurance that he will return.

  30. He attacks them and reveals his lofty mettle,

    routing and despoiling them single-handed;

  31. he seizes their riding beasts and brings them

    in heaps like hillocks, driven along.

  32. Indeed, he has virtues too many to count,

    beyond all reach and any numbering pen.

  33. The two hands of glory have been drawn toward him:

    both newly won glory and glory inherited of old.

  34. May God preserve him—what a resolute king—

    and establish the lofty pillar of his realm;

  35. may He strengthen him, prolong his life, and keep him obeyed,

    keeping him master, never mastered—

  36. by the honor of the noblest ever to ride a mount

    and the most generous of all to whom delegations came.

  37. Upon him may clouds of blessings follow one another,

    ever renewed, never ceasing and never perishing.

Sol 5.6