ألا هل لجفن ساهر الليل ساهد — Shakib Arslan

Ah, can an eyelid wakeful through the night find sleep?

Sleep has fled since your separation.

Can one hope that these streams of tears will subside,

When even hard stones would overflow before they did?

Can a heart be expected to heal

Without the froth of a rising sigh?

Can a sorrowing man find solace when

The fires of existence blaze within his sides?

He passes the night as its dark serpents creep,

Their mottled fangs striking at his innermost being.

And for those who watch the stars in the vast darkness,

What companions remain dear but the two Pole Stars?

The flood of tears ran down with its reins let loose,

And hearts surrendered their reins to grief.

How can a frayed heart withstand time,

When its effects show even in solid stone?

Time has destroyed those who passed; those who remain are its captives.

In its grasp, nothing living stays except to perish.

It has spared no heart from its blows, though it cannot itself

Be struck, and though it casts its blows without hand or arm.

Reflect: life holds calamities,

And people are either weeping or grieving.

If people examined matters deeply, they would all become

Philosophers and ascetics, every one of them.

The two ever-renewed things that follow one another

Are, to one who looks closely, the shears of our lives.

Day only gives away the people upon it,

And night only leads them toward extinction.

Its crescents are swords poised over every head,

Though those swords are only pieces of iron.

A calamity, by my life, that if it settled upon Yadhbul

Would shake every one of its firmly rooted foundations.

It settled around the minister, but he repelled it

With an army of patience held ready for hardship.

And that was not the only loss he suffered;

The arm of piety and worthy deeds had been struck.

He lost a dutiful mother; her loss

Is a bereavement without anyone to help bear it.

Even the returning rains once sought water through mention of her

When the season's first rain left the familiar grounds thirsty.

She passed away with no stain to cloud her purity,

And bore no burden that an earnest worshipper could reproach.

Even if, by God, she had no virtue

But you, you alone would suffice, with nothing more required.

No single virtue encompassed what she possessed,

Though she gathered every virtue into one person.

For a minister from the kin of Uthman, who has attained,

By your life, the loftiest aims through his sovereign.

You took charge of a lofty station in Lebanon,

Whose peaks bow to no one who would level them.

Through the justice of your rule, you set it on a course

That returned it, I mean, from infancy to maturity.

Through your integrity and uprightness, you led it

To the clearest springs, as even those who dislike you acknowledge.

If it were charged with telling you its thanks,

Every one of its swaying branches would greet you.

Yours is a vigilance so great that, by following it,

You have taken sleep's place in the eyelid of a sleeper.

And if Lebanon shares your sorrow,

How much joy has come to it through you.

Take comfort: how many worthy deeds stand to your credit,

And how much good protects your descendant.

We have seen you act in all your affairs

With a moderation that baffles everyone who seeks it.

These are the deeds of a man who fears God in his dealings with His creatures

And knows that no human being lives forever.

May you remain guarded from harm, ascending

Heights that place the sun among those who envy you.

And may I remain rightly guided in every matter

In serving the striving sovereign of the land.

May your standing with him be all I have wished, and may you remain

A hope to a friend or a thorn to an opponent.

Your renown travels through the earth faster than light,

And one of my poems travels across its horizons.