عج بالحمى مهفهفات غصونه

وحذار من غيد الكثيب وعينه

Turn aside to the sanctuary: its boughs are slender-waisted.

And beware the dune's graceful women and its wide-eyed beauties.

من كان وسنان كأن لحاظه

نصلت ذوابل قومه من دونه

One who is drowsy-eyed, as though his glances

Had tipped his people's slender spears in his defense.

كيف الخلاص لمن هواه هوانه

في حبه ومناه ريب منونه

What escape is there for one whose passion is his abasement

In loving him, and whose wish is the stroke of his own doom?

ما كدت تغلبني جيوش جماله

لولا العذار يمدها بكمينه

I would scarcely have been overcome by the armies of his beauty,

Had his cheek-down not reinforced them with its ambush force.

كالسيف تعرف حده من هجره

خشناً وتعرف صفحه من لينه

Like a sword, you know his edge through his estrangement—

Harsh—and know his flat side through his gentleness.

أهدى إلى الأغصان لين قوامه

وأعار جسم الصب سقم جفونه

He bestowed his figure's suppleness upon the branches,

And lent the lovesick lover's body his eyelids' languor.

تتقابل الأضداد عند محبه

في حسنه فتبين عن مكنونه

For his lover, opposites confront one another

In his beauty, and thus reveal his hidden essence.

فقام لصحة لفظه

وظلام طرته لصبح جبينه

So he stood for the soundness of his speech,

And his forelock's darkness against the dawn of his brow.