نَهارُكَ مِن حُسنٍ وَلَيلُكَ واحِدُ

فَذا أَنتَ حَيرانٌ وَذا أَنتَ ساهِدُ

Your day is full of beauty and your night is but one,

Your day, because of beauty, and your night are one,

Yet at times you’re confused, at others collected and calm.

For in the one you are bewildered, and in the other, sleepless.

وَفيها رَعاكَ اللَهُ عَنكَ تَثاقُلٌ

وَما ذاكَ إِلّا أَنَّها فيكَ زاهِدُ

In it Allah has relieved you of heaviness,

And in her—may God protect you—lies a heavy indifference toward you,

That only because it has become indifferent to you.

And that is only because she has no desire for you.

وَأَنتَ الفَتى في مِثلِ وَصلِ حِبالِهِ

تَنافَسَتِ الحورُ الحِسانُ الخَرائِدُ

You are the young man that maidens competed for,

Though you are the young man for the bond of whose union

Like lovely gazelles vie for the one they love.

The fair, dark-eyed beauties and modest maidens vie.

وَلَكِن كَما قالَ الهُمامُ وَإِنَّني

أَقولُ وَفي الأَمثالِ لِلهَمِّ طارِدُ

But as the great ones have said, though I do proclaim

But as the noble chief once said—and truly I

I chase worries away, as the saying goes.

Repeat it, for in proverbs lies a banishment of grief:

أَلا رُبَّ مَشغوفٍ بِنا لا يَنالُنا

وَآخَرُ قَد نَشفى بِهِ يَتَباعَدُ

Many who pine for us will not have us,

"How often is one enamored with us, yet attains us not,"

While others we heal will turn away.

"While another, by whom we might be healed, keeps his distance."