على مهجتي تجني الحوادث والدهر — أبو الحسن الجرجاني

Misfortunes and time assail my lifeblood;

but my steadfast endurance is unassailable and rugged.

As though what I face each day befalls me

for a crime—yet my only crime is that I am free.

So if time has nothing in store but what

I struggle to bear, I have patience for it.

And they said, 'Attain wealth through submission,'

yet they did not know that submission itself is poverty.

Between me and wealth stand two gates that have denied

me riches: my unyielding soul and time.

When it says, 'This is ease,' I see before it

places where hardship is better than my standing there.

When they are given precedence for wealth, I step ahead of them

with the soul of a poor man whose every virtue is wealth.

And what harm to one like me, if he has mastered

his desires, held in the palm of one who has acquired gold?

And the most I offer one who falls short

in merit is disregard and a scornful sidelong glance.