1. Out of caution, I deliberately forgo visiting,

    and turn away from you and your dwellings, keeping aside,

  2. until I am thought cured of love's yearning,

    empty of it, though I am tormented and consumed with longing.

  3. It is as though that brisk pace had been a deposit,

    a treasure that enriched me, now gone.

  4. I have never found an allotted share matching its desert:

    in fortune, it is either deficient or excessive.

  5. I marvel at the unlucky, denied though toiling,

    ardently striving, and the fortunate, gaining while seated,

  6. and at the disparity of allotted shares among them,

    never slackening in their descent and ascent.

  7. One denied his wish while at ease has not the plight

    of one denied his wish while striving.

  8. And there are clans whose dealings are obscure to you:

    neither friends to support you, nor enemies.

  9. I visit them furtively: I set out eager,

    toward where they are, and return without desire.

  10. I have said to one mistakenly seeking noble deeds,

    while deliberately earning reproaches:

  11. Never add another like it to a wrong;

    the worst wrongdoing is to do wrong again.

  12. Raise your hands to generosity, bestowing bounty;

    eminence among men belongs to the highest giving hand.

  13. Like Abu al-Saqr, for whom stretched forth

    Shayban's farthest reach in noble deeds.

  14. I rejoice that none is noble in character

    among a people unless his father too is noble.

  15. And noble dispositions and qualities

    belong to those noble in lineage and ancestral stock.

  16. Whenever you question a man's character about him,

    it speaks truly of him, as evidence and witness.

  17. He assumed the vizierate, preserving a nation

    whose destruction had nearly arrived.

  18. It had despaired of justice, until it imagined

    in its despair that God was leaving it untended.

  19. They journey by night from Baghdad, following his domed pavilions,

    visiting their traces and sanctuaries.

  20. Were they not so numerous in its open courts,

    they would be painted as blossoms or built as mosques.

  21. I am content with him as a host receiving visitors; he has enough

    in me, when I follow my rhymes as a visitor,

  22. in gratitude for his mighty favors; not lost are

    favors that filled the lands with praises of him.

  23. How could I hang back from him, when in his bounty

    his is not the only giving hand, nor am I ungrateful?

  24. It grants you, at day's outset, the farthest reach of wealth,

    with gifts that only yesterday were promises,

  25. in the manner of clouds: they never begin with lightning

    in a cloudbank without following it with thunder.

  26. Whenever you return to him, thanking him for his bounty,

    the outflows of his gifts become inflows again.

  27. He kindles resolves which, if bent on smelting it,

    would smelt the solid rocky heights of Sharurayn.

  28. Indeed, among shoulders you cannot recognize a strong one

    without making it bear a crushing burden.

  29. He set the horses upon Isfahan; ask no more

    of his counsel and the army when they joined forces.

  30. It is as though al-Saffar in Fars had been

    Egypt's Pharaoh, leading astray and giving no guidance.

  31. You sent al-Ijli after him, then reinforced him

    with al-Kawtakin, as a comrade and supporter.

  32. So fear was behind the foreign wretch, and before him

    were war's deadly perils that bring the swiftest destruction.

  33. The strategy of a lion who never holds back, prevailing

    over his challengers, confronting and outwitting them.

  34. Men's stature has dwindled, and they have grown modest

    in striving, until you see none who envies you.

  35. Were they to rival you, they would snatch from your bounty

    enough to mend the corrupted age.

  36. They sat back; how can one rise, already overtopped

    by the battlements of what you build, its summits and foundations?

  37. You have never lacked a throng surrounding you eagerly,

    nor qualities that reveal your person as unique.

  38. Most deserving of my wonder is a compulsion

    that urges the led to obey the leader.

  39. Thousands refuse to be seen as other thousands'

    followers—yet thousands follow a single man.

  40. You have indeed surpassed kings in your abode,

    in height and courtyards that delight the scout.

  41. You stretched forth, seeking what they never sought,

    a hand that brings you heaven, and an arm.

  42. You made your women censurers' night sleepless; but for the gifts

    whose choicest you bestow, they would have slept.

  43. They vent their anger on you rather than on folk

    who are served, through reproach, cool, clear water.

  44. When they brand you and the miser with an epithet,

    you are the misguided one, and the miser the rightly guided.

  45. I know indeed that your ambition climbs

    ever upward, until you dispatch Ṣāʿid.

  46. In victory, each repetition follows the first,

    and in wealth, new acquisitions follow inherited riches.

  47. Glory! Time has never ceased to be charged

    with glory, joining it to the radiant, noble man.

  48. These are your bounties, with which you were endowed;

    their rare wonders have returned to you as poems.

  49. Their fame gives you stars rising,

    and their very selves show you mountains everlasting.

  50. Taking trackless routes, their reciters never cease

    refusing to let them travel by direct paths.

  51. Such are rhymes: they never settle, fixed,

    for a much-praised man until they roam abroad as strays.

  52. Causes of exhausting treasures: whenever

    they are unveiled before a king, he gives freely of ancestral wealth.

  53. And the sea—were its ships not propelled

    by the wind, they would remain motionless upon it.

Sol 6.1