أبى الله إلا أن تجود وتنعما — Sardar

God has willed only that you give generously and bestow favors,

Your qualities, which overflow with generosity.

Yours is the highest example in every virtue;

When the narrator fills Najd with it, he goes on to Tihama.

Pearls from the sea of virtues—if they appear

To their diver, he invokes blessings and peace upon them.

And if beautiful women acquired them by some stratagem,

They would adorn a neck with them and bedeck a wrist.

And how many a resolve is yours amid its dark ordeals,

Outstripping the vast army in winning victory.

Its two edges make the cleaving sword seem slight,

And its two sides put straightened spear-shafts to shame.

And generosity is nothing but that with which you slew great wealth,

So you left neither a dinar nor a dirham.

So the clouds do not vie with you when they pour,

Nor can the sea match your two shores, even when it swells.

And can the peoples undertake

Noble deeds that have baffled Simak and Mirzam?

You shouldered the burdens of greatness; and had it been called

To carry them, the mature camel of Diyaf would have groaned.

So alike are one who seeks your heights and one who seeks

A ladder to reach the pathways of the heavens.

And praise cannot do full justice to your heights; it is simply

Incumbent upon the eloquent speaker to speak.

Have you not seen that the earth is broad and spacious,

And we send lean young she-camels across it?

The favor reached me, O Amid al-Dawla, by which

You breathed life into me and revived my bones.

As though the messenger who made me hear its melodies

Were a messenger reciting an unambiguous revelation from God.

So through it I was clothed in health, which is my shield

Whenever the bows of Time nock arrows.

And through it the cup of healing went round, and there were hung

Upon me charms from it that heal the lovesick.

For, in my inability to give thanks, I nearly saw

My tongue severed and my heart struck dumb.

But it is the wind of praise: when it blows

With mention of you, I can restrain neither tongue nor mouth.

And your favors are the springtime meadow: when it calls

The gray doves with its blossoms, it bursts into song.

So no dawn smiles unless you bestow on it

With your radiant splendor, a mouth and a smile.

Nor does night grow dark without your lending it

Your bright, gleaming qualities as stars.

The days of Time obey you, listening attentively

With their ears, until you speak and give commands.

Exquisite rhymes from my praise will come to you,

Over which the pre-Islamic poet vies with the poet of both eras.

And I am indeed well versed in prose,

But pearls find their beauty in being strung.