From what branch did you fly, O nightingale?

And did the spring know of your parting?!

Song, then, would have died in its breast,

and the rill dried up upon its lashes;

the roses slew themselves upon their thorns,

and the north wind turned azure with fragrance,

hastening to pour out its breaths

as perfume upon your feet, O nightingale.

O visitor to Lebanon, the birds

and the brook have hurried to meet you:

on the green slopes lies the sprinkling of dew,

on the knolls lie carpets of velvet;

the flowers have spilled out their flasks,

the wheat-ears have bent with longing for you,

the palms have craned their necks,

and their swaying branches have clapped;

the cedars have rejoiced, as though the nights

had brought back to them their first dream —

the days when Ashtarut upon their slopes

wandered, asking after her gazelle.

Since her age there has not passed through Lebanon

a voice more tender, or a lovelier breeze.

O enchantment of the roses in their blossom,

O laughter of the sun and all it bears,

O twittering of the birds at their wedding,

O tenderness of the water and all it carries:

come down with the rain upon our land,

revel there, and tickle its ear till it is drunken;

in every eye there is a shelter for you,

and in every poet's heart a temple.

You are my mother before ever I knew my mother —

so call me to your breast, and hold me close,

and let your morning brightness kiss me,

laughing-lidded, weeping,

upon the necks of your hills:

one who wrests his bread from the proud rugged wild,

who dives into the heart of the deaf rock,

pledged, so long as I live, to supply my nation from my mother's bounty.

There glimmers to me from the depths of your soil

a deep sea, whence come your raiment and your jewels.

Wrap me close upon my right hand,

give me to drink the water of my brow —

you are my world and my faith.

Never has my brow bent to any but you;

in the soil its dew has prayed to your dew:

a hermit — my censer the sun, my holy places your hills.

What is the hand of the sun, and what the bounty of the ocean?

Of all the mothers of the universe, the most generous is mine.

Her offspring down the ages

are messengers of faith and light,

and on the shore of Tyre

she stood against a glowering tyrant,

guiding the universe, showing the way to every mother.

I shall call her by her title, in reverence — I shall not name her:

she is the mother of the gracious oasis and the towering peak.

She is my mother.