حقا أقول لقد تبلت فؤادي — Albohtry

Truly I say: you have ravaged my heart,

And prolonged the span of my persistent folly,

With abiding anguish: if you tasted its burning thirst,

You would find it unlike ordinary anguish.

And you have discerned love's anguish in my vigor,

And seen the obedience of my submissive heart.

Love is an affliction of souls; it pleases me

That women and men visiting the sick should overlook it.

Can you ward off a gray hair, if it comes in the predawn dark,

At its proper time, or hastens before its appointed hour?

It has come as a vanguard ahead of further arrivals:

This one visits me at evening, and that one in the morning.

And a loser is the trader in a head of hair,

Who buys its fresh whiteness with blackness.

Do not deceive yourself: youth does not remain

Within us, nor can youth's season be brought back.

And I see youth, for all the bloom of its loveliness

And its beauty, as a number among numbers.

Indeed, the caliphate has found praiseworthy in Ahmad

Virtues through which he has risen beyond praise.

A king whom kings salute; before him are

The mark of piety and the humble reverence of ascetics.

Unbroken fasting has weakened the movement

Of the gaze of one thirsty and parched in the midday heat.

A night-worshipper, he conceals his prayer, yet

The visible mark of prostration will not let it be hidden.

Open-handed, when he sits with knees drawn up in a gathering,

Generosity is the hallmark of that assembly.

Look at him when he turns about, bestowing

Bounty, and speak of the sea and those who seek its waters.

And when he speaks, listen to an address

That dispels the blindness of the bewildered seeker.

The Muslims came to him and found

The one of all people nearest to piety and rectitude,

With a virtue in the soul that, in him, is joined

To the virtues of fathers and forefathers;

And a station so exalted that beneath it fall short

The ambitions of foes and the envy of the envious.

They weighed the soundness of his intellect, but only

Weighed thereby a mountain among mountains.

And behind that forbearance is a lion of Khafiyyah,

Defending their domain, and a serpent of a valley.

Vigilant, the impulses of his conduct are held in check

With strong bonds of sound judgment.

Like a sword in God's cause, yet he may be seen

In generosity like the bending branch of the nabʿ tree.

A shepherd whom truth has shown its straight path,

So he began to fight in its defense and do battle.

His subjects wished: if only the nights

Had brought him sooner to kingship and birth.

The sons of al-Abbas followed the guidance of one granted success,

Firm in insight, a guide along the clear road,

Securing for them earnest, loyal counsel

From their allies, and the repelling of foes.

And it was as though, when they followed his tracks,

They followed the radiance of the blazing star.

He forgets offenses before their memory has grown old,

Casting aside grudges, effacing hatreds.

You pardon, seeking God's pardon for yourself,

And pardon is the best of noble men's qualities.

Your protective care has reached every tribe's delegation,

And your justice has succored the people of every land.

May you never lack a life whose joy returns

Forever, and a Nowruz renewed for you.

And may you live on, mankind offering itself as your ransom; indeed,

The ransomer's worth is slight beside the one ransomed.

I fear the land tax, and because of its magnitude have called upon

The king of kings and benefactor of benefactors.