سقيت دمشق وجارتا جيرونها — Abn Alsaati

May Damascus and the two neighbors of its Jayrun be watered

with torrents from the showers' threefold teats.

A handiwork restoring to the plains, with its dye,

the colors that the drought-year had altered.

And lightning's rain clothed every leafy grove:

the gardens of its Nayrab, as far as its Qabun,

then the open grounds of its Mizzah, as far as its Qanawat,

then the two valleys, as far as the ravines of its Minin.

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Homelands of my homelands! The creed of my yearning

is never, in love, to turn from their creed.

Your soul exults in the precious worth of its people,

and your eye delights in the beauties of its spring.

And two counterparts charm you in their movements:

slender figures and its swaying branches.

How many a garden where its great trees' limbs danced,

and its nightingales brought their lovely melodies!

Cooing birds called out my ardor and my love;

they came upon its boughs with their varied arts.

My longing lies buried in Syria; and the rapture of long-

-ings—nothing touches you like its buried treasure.

Have you seen anything lovelier than the mantle of its earth,

while its sky has donned the veil of its clouded gloom?

And my lifeblood for the spear's sister, whom I unveiled

in her bright hue, and bent in her suppleness.

Indeed I have heard, yet never heard of her equal;

the heart of the one she pierced yearns for her forever.

Fear her supple stature and her people's slender spears,

and beware of their swords and her eyelids.

Love for Layla of Amir has surely lengthened my night;

why, then, does she not pity her madman?

I weep and she laughs; through it all she never asks about

my plight, nor my eye and its streams of tears.

And many a desert waste I crossed on noble riding-camels,

tall as their long saddle-straps and woven girths.

Each headlong in night travel, long-striding in the

mornings, crossing the wilderness, trustworthy upon it.

They passed through the bellies of its hollows and ravines,

and combed the backs of its plains and rugged tracts.

And many a brimming sea of mirage

I crossed, secure aboard its ships.

Then they arrived gaunt as bows, bearing

arrow-like riders, darting on their weakened mounts.

And toward the heights of the pure-bred king they rose,

above every tainted-fingered, baseborn man.

Until, when they alighted in the courtyard of the one they sought,

there they redeemed their forfeited pledges.