1. Had I feared one with henna-stained fingertips,

    I would not have visited your encampment without safe-conduct.

  2. O youthful passion that crept toward me deceitfully,

    like wine stealing the drinker's wakefulness!

  3. Look: lowering the eyelids is of no use

    to a heart that sees what the two eyes cannot.

  4. Gray hair has erased youth, but has not erased

    love's covenant with it, nor made me forget.

  5. Thus I learned that love contains a delusion

    that stealthily slays the gray-haired and the young.

  6. No message rides upon the camels' rumps

    to distract me; why, then, salute the riders?

  7. Pardon them: had they known your anguish, they would have asked

    Wajra's gazelles about the boughs of the ban-tree.

  8. You two, tell the dunes of al-Aqiq: rise high

    before the sanctuary; I shall measure you with my soaring gaze.

  9. A wasted lover's sigh shall surely scatter the sand,

    if tears do not help it with their streaming.

  10. The company hastened away, and every eye following them

    stumbles in its glances over the departing camel litters.

  11. It was as though my two sleeves, the day I met her,

    had been woven of eyelids through tears.

  12. Burden my two sleeves, the day I met her,

    with tears: they had been woven of eyelids.

  13. Demand of my fortitude what it can accomplish;

    have I anything beyond a human being's capacity?

  14. Though I escaped love with a remnant of life,

    love is the worst destroyer of living creatures.

  15. He who showered my heart with his arrows knows

    that he struck his own flanks when he struck me.

  16. Had my eye not been, at their ruined dwellings,

    slaughtered, it would not have shed deep crimson.

  17. Maliciously imputing false meanings to the eyelids,

    while tears rain upon them in many colors.

  18. Even if they were water, they would say: 'His tears

    are saliva, and his eye's two lids are lips.'

  19. Thirsty for al-Nuqayb's water, for it is

    the watering-place of dark lips and the drinking-places of boughs.

  20. How lovely the breeze's murmur, telling

    of the fragrance of that neckline and those sleeves!

  21. If al-Liwa's plain and rugged ground are not

    my homeland, its companions are my dear friends.

  22. Had they settled at Zarud, I would have bestowed on it

    my ardor, saying: 'A home is made by its neighbors.'

  23. Attachments play with me; many a yearning

    of Syria has enthralled a Yemeni heart.

  24. Will a she-camel bring me to their home, bridled

    with longing, laden with sorrows?

  25. Perhaps I may turn toward the domed tents, confiding

    secrets too heavy to remain concealed.

  26. And pursue those eyes whose deadly power

    dictates to me the slayings of knights.

  27. As we exchange delightful turns of speech,

    whose sound sets the two lean camels listening.

  28. Repeat your glances into the camel litters; afterward,

    far, far away is the two tribes' dwelling side by side.

  29. After I had rubbed their watcher's nose in dust,

    in anger, and plunged into the jealous man's fury,

  30. and entered their land by night, beneath its sky

    were spearheads as numerous as the stars.

  31. A land whose streams are swords, whose grass

    is nab'-wood and the ash-spears they have planted.

  32. Among a people who loved blood-feuds and preferred

    drinking blood there to drinking milk.

  33. A folk whose guests, when they greet their great bowls,

    are answered by the tongues of flames.

  34. And when the scalp's growth has withered,

    it is through fulfilling needs of consequence.

  35. The deserts shall surely learn that their foreheads

    are branded by swift travel and brisk trotting.

  36. Urged onward, lean as arrow-shafts,

    and brought home curved as bows,

  37. or they reach a precinct where

    delegations graze on the growth of beneficence.

  38. The lord of great deeds and praises is its lord,

    the patron of favors, maiden and seasoned.

  39. The unyielding tyrants meet his face

    with heads bowed down upon their chins,

  40. falling upon the earth as though they

    had drunk pure wine from jars through awe of him.

  41. They trod his horses' hooves with their lips

    in kisses; his two feet were too exalted for them.

  42. Until, when they parted the pavilion curtains, lowered

    were those gazes before a radiant, purebred man.

  43. The crowned heads of kings have become certain that he,

    if he wishes, can divorce them from their crowns.

  44. Strut sparingly, father of mangy camel-calves:

    the great stallions have more right to strut.

  45. Leave the preserve to a raging beast that grazes there,

    whose sudden attacks his peers must fear.

  46. What lies within his crushing foreleg's reach is forbidden;

    so turn instead toward the wolf's prey.

  47. No feeding-place for your weak birds lies in a strait

    over which the predatory eagles hover.

  48. The eastern court has the furthest reach

    on a day of battle and a day of racing.

  49. Its mounts do not turn back at the reins,

    nor its noble steeds desist at a bridle.

  50. Aspirations like lightning flashing

    through a stone-lashing storm or a pouring cloud,

  51. and resolves reared with the spear-tips

    and sword-edges, and suckled with the same milk.

  52. When mankind named him their adornment,

    they attained the best station in exaltedness.

  53. Adnan brought him forth among its ancestral honors,

    until the sons of Qahtan acknowledged him.

  54. A glory overlooking time and its people,

    in whose shade humankind and jinn rest at noon;

  55. and witnessed distinctions, in whose favor rule

    the soothsayers' rhymed sayings on the day of rivalry.

  56. Who can contend with him for glory, when he has fastened

    its tent-ropes upon Yadhbul and Aban?

  57. A seeker of vengeance for glory when it is repulsed

    among the base, its supporters deemed fools.

  58. He was not content with what the noble had established before him,

    until he brought marvels and meanings.

  59. His virtues superseded those qualities of theirs

    through which they prospered in bygone ages.

  60. Such are his merits: had their mention come earlier,

    their repeated verses would have been recited in the Qur'an.

  61. He gives you what the generous man withheld; his creed

    is that wealth and its absence are alike.

  62. When men fortified their riches,

    he made gifts his most trustworthy treasurers.

  63. How many a famine his rain-stars have made smile,

    though rain does not turn toward a thirsty man.

  64. From his palms come extra gifts and grants,

    and from hearts come hopes and wishes.

  65. Beware lest asking overwhelm one seeking

    a gift, and he ride the flood's crest.

  66. I judged rightly: clouds may resemble his bounty,

    but that is distant, while this is near.

  67. I paired him with the sea, casting forth lavish gifts,

    forgetting the disasters it contains.

  68. I recalled the lion's fierce assaults in him,

    yet a lion may turn away from rivals.

  69. May the ages never lack your counsel: it is

    the sun and moon of their nights and days.

  70. A counsel whose downpour may God give the caliphate,

    and with whose thunderbolts may He strike the hateful.

  71. Success, sons of al-Abbas! Your spear

    is wielded by the arm most skilled in thrusting.

  72. Fortune reinforced your numbers from its thicket

    with one fiercer than the marauding lion of the lair.

  73. He guards your honor without a helper,

    and protects your grazing herds without assistants.

  74. His leaps are keen resolve whenever he attacks,

    his roar a judgment and decisive declaration.

  75. Armored with his heart and fingertips,

    and his tongue—a mighty striker and thruster.

  76. When he saw—and prudence benefits its possessors—

    the caliphate's old camel resting its neck upon the ground,

  77. and the sword—if it leapt in a striker's hands—

    and the spear not lifting the eye of its point,

  78. the wizardry of his gentleness treated the incurable disease;

    camel-mange is cured by the tar-applier's salve.

  79. Until concealment vanished, and was scorned

    the patient man's patience by the angry man's fury,

  80. and he saw truce as a flint being struck,

    and peace as food for the weakened enemy,

  81. he called, and answering him were the neighs of racers

    and the creaking of every resounding bow,

  82. and horsemen who endure the fires of battle,

    amid smoke from what their steeds stir up.

  83. They led against the enemy every swift mare,

    whose joints were built upon a demon.

  84. Like watchtowers beneath them; and they upon

    their backs were like the crags of Thahlan.

  85. They rose like the sun, whose light submerges

    the heads of hillocks and the hollows of lowlands.

  86. It was as though their bows prostrated themselves before

    your face's radiance, when they came to you bent,

  87. after they had filled the open land and forbidden

    its spring clover to the gazelles.

  88. They race toward death, each one of them

    facing destruction while still numbered among boys.

  89. If they lack reins for their horses,

    they twist the warriors' forelocks into reins for them.

  90. In every battlefield their champions cast

    an arrow-lot that wins when the two hosts meet.

  91. Ask the mountains of Rum, when they encircled

    their necks with ridges of their assembled host:

  92. their steeds graze there upon the bright stars,

    and drink in pools from the clouds.

  93. As though, in the sphere of the summits, they sought

    to capture Capella for Aldebaran.

  94. They left battlefields like the slaughter-places of Mina,

    and enemies' skulls like sacrificial offerings.

  95. As though fresh blood carpeted their heights

    and their hollows with Nu'man's anemones.

  96. Then came to you the delegation of the sons of al-Usayfir, borne

    by the two wings of abasement and humiliation.

  97. They turned toward him in surrender; long had they

    exalted their faith above other faiths.

  98. They paid tribute submissively, as though

    through that payment they had made a covenant of protection.

  99. Each day their treasuries pour forth

    in bounty a thousand in pure gold.

  100. You emerged in robes of dignity, with an awe

    that put out unbelief's eyes with faith.

  101. It is enough that you led error by guidance

    and made the abode of war an abode of safety.

  102. This Iraq: its confusions have cleared,

    and it is purified of motes and stains.

  103. If the toil of reaching water has touched it,

    it shall kneel, through your blessings, at watering-place folds.

  104. You drove the wolves of the ghada thickets from its watering-place,

    so safety pastures it without herdsmen.

  105. Arslan fled, stroking within his breast

    a heart that urged him to take flight.

  106. Banu Asad sped away, drawing off their milch camels,

    pouring between al-Hazn and al-Samman.

  107. The raven flew with the ill-omened birds, crying

    of separation among al-Jawan's dwellings.

  108. Uqayl traversed the breadth of every wasteland

    with a swift she-camel's trot and a stallion's gallop.

  109. In Syria, fear of your might united them,

    though their hearts were divided by rancor.

  110. Far from escape! Had they ridden the Ostriches in the dark,

    and had you wished, the two Eagles would have hunted them down.

  111. So too your enemy: if his body escapes,

    his heart is a captive in fear's leather bonds.

  112. Between Egypt and your resolve lies an appointed meeting,

    whose encounter the two pyramids await.

  113. If distance protects it, it is for such a goal

    that every noble, obedient she-camel is led.

  114. Stream-water is for hands; but

    well-water is reached with ropes.

  115. He whose reins command the earth's east—

    why should he not direct its west with a bridle?

  116. The army is a vast host, and orders are obeyed,

    and victory is hoped for from the Most Merciful.

Sol 6.1