إلى أي سر في الهوى لم أخالف — Albohtry

To what secret of love have I not stolen away?

And what passion have I not encountered there?

And I have lapses that stir love's anguish in me;

They expose me, through its torment, to mortal perils.

As though the beguiling eyes had joined forces

To avenge a grievance they held against the weeping eyes.

So if I forget youth's companions, it is only after

I dwelt with youth's courts among my familiar haunts.

I see the confidence of one hoping for union with the oryx-eyed beauties

Oppressed or weighed down by a fearful man's doubt.

As though the parting with which they disappoint him were a vow-maker's pledge,

Which they discharge, or a swearer's oath.

When we meet them, gray hair our companion,

They feign ignorance, or speak to us of bygone days.

Even if she has turned away from us, many are the souls

Thirsting for those averted cheeks.

Would that the lover's longings were sent back into

His breast, or placed with one willing to fulfill them.

And the burning passion of the love-stricken is nothing but an affliction

Upon him, if he is denied the favor of the one who inflames his love.

I began with the claims of friends, and would not

Make them equal to the claims of acquaintances.

And I treated people equally in thanking them for their bounty,

Though their ranks range from commoners to caliphs.

I count a friend's fairness as a gracious favor,

And indeed, some mutual fairness is a form of generosity.

And how many people I have loathed or blamed, condemning

Their arrogance and haughty airs!

They seem, at times of giving—may they lose one another!—

Like portents of the hours of life-snatching death.

If young men are hidden from you, obscuring

Their worth, then know them by their generous deeds.

I have judged Ishaq ibn Yaqub to be generous,

With the judgment of neither an exaggerator nor a biased man.

Proud and unyielding, when his hands hover over the heights,

You discern him there, distinguished in his deeds.

He races toward goals of glory that have hurled

Him beyond the utmost reach of tempestuous winds.

When the people are told, "Estimate them by your conjecture,"

They shrink from setting out anew across those wastelands.

He arrives first at the farthest goal,

When they expect from him only the approach of one drawing near.

Our greatest delight is that his envier should bite

His own palm in humiliation, angry and aggrieved.

Nor do his longstanding deeds of kindness excuse him

From gaining more glory through fresh ones.

And how could they rival the rocky heights, whose peaks soar—

The low-lying floors of the sandy waste's level plains?

I gathered my hopes together in him, and did not turn

Toward scattered, dispersed groups and factions.

And I forged an alliance between my poetry and his generosity:

If you are not kin in wealth, then forge an alliance.

Rare pieces of noble verse he repays

In exchange with rarities from his bounty.

Whenever the embroidered fabric of verse reaches him, there comes to us

Rare embroidered cloth from Sūs, with smoothly trailing fringes.

We keep selling brocade for silk-and-wool, receiving its price,

And barter striped robes here for bordered cloaks.

And were he in the land of slaves, he would supply us

With an abundance of slave-boys and slave-girls.

Deft of hand in generosity: wherever it turns,

It shows a marvel of its ever-multiplying beauty.