Sol 5.6

  1. The garden is your garden, O nightingale—so sing!

    And fashion rare gems for the uniquely gifted man of wit.

  2. When the rhymes come from you at their appointed time,

    they are like beloved women arriving though no tryst was made.

  3. Those necklaces—how lovely they are as ornaments

    for al-Jumayyil’s son, the finest man they ever adorned!

  4. For the genius who has won both distinctions:

    lofty honor in the land, and noble stock.

  5. Excellent in his art is that young man who,

    if the East numbers its gifted luminaries, is numbered among them.

  6. Who is like Antun al-Jumayyil as a writer—

    an overflowing watering-place, pure at its source?

  7. If he practices prose composition, he is the most eloquent of writers;

    or if he practices declamation, the most articulate of reciters.

  8. Have you heard him deliver a sweeping discourse and pursue

    a novel, moving course never known before?

  9. Then joy—or sorrow—may lie within a single word,

    or in a freely flowing syllable, as though reiterated.

  10. And when he modulates the cadence of his voice,

    you fancy in it the flutter of a sleepless eyelid.

  11. It is a power denied to one who has not poured

    his powers into it, nor labored and striven.

  12. Not every murmur intended as speech is eloquence;

    no—nor is every elevated utterance finely voiced.

  13. Have you seen him, high upon the pulpits, orating,

    the people all ears and eyes for him?

  14. His ringing speech contains every marvel:

    the roar of a maned lion and the voice of a songbird.

  15. Most wondrous of orators is he in his power

    to win an assembly with what the assembly once rejected.

  16. Master of hearts through the tenderness of his speech,

    and through his force, both innate and deliberately summoned;

  17. deft in gesture, with it he draws near

    every distant thing the soul desires.

  18. When he writes in measured prose, his passages are

    nothing but rare jewels wrought in gold.

  19. Within them rays have gushed forth powerfully,

    like torrents gushing from black ink.

  20. His marvels come roaming free through his prose;

    how often have they broken the spell of wandering rhymes!

  21. In them, flashes gleam from the bright stars of night;

    and in them is the fragrance of breaths from dewy blossoms.

  22. At invention’s furthest reach, a splendid meaning

    makes the features of a splendid form shine.

  23. Indeed, al-Jumayyil, in beauty and in his art,

    is the subtlest innovator and the finest renewer.

Sol 5.6