ان يكن صبك المتيم قد دل — Shabrawy

If your love-enslaved lover has been humbled,

After honor, do not heed reproach against him.

O my desire, look kindly upon him,

And consider his condition closely, and reflect.

And if ever word reaches you of his forgetting love,

Then dismiss the report entirely and interpret it otherwise.

Do not believe a reproacher's words about him;

Indeed, a reproacher's habit is to invent lies.

No, by your eyes, I do not compare you to a bough—

—and though you are unjust, to me you are more upright.

How often I placate my reproachers over you, while life—

—is short, and the account of my plight is long.

O brother of the gazelle, you once looked my way;

So restore to me what I first had from you.

God suffice you! How often you torment a lover

Who has relied on your beauty alone.

Whenever the heart hoped for healing,

Your two eyes ruined what it had hoped for.

And whenever my body recovered in its love for you,

And saw your languid eyelid, it fell ill.

Withhold the glances from us, for they are arrows;

Set the eyelid in their path and let it droop.

And how strange that the rose of your cheeks atop the—

—figure kindled the heart, though it is withered.

Shun me or draw near; wrong me or be just, for I—

—will never turn away from you, O bough.

And forsake me if you wish, O gazelle; but—

God suffices me if you forsake me; and excellent is the...

And say no more, O reproacher, for he is my desire,

Whether he is generous or unjust, grants favors or grows weary.