Youth and beauty are the realm of your hands —

what crown is more precious than your two crowns?

Beauty set up its throne, and we asked

who was meant for it — and we were pointed to you.

So pour your tender soul upon it,

as the sky pours itself into your eyes.

Whenever youth contends with a beauty

of wondrous radiance, it traces it back to you.

The nightingale sings only to cast

the sighs of passion into your ears.

The rose killed itself out of envy of you

and threw its blood upon your cheeks.

And the butterflies wearied of the flowers

when the breezes told them of your lips.

They raised of you an ideal for beauty,

and bowed down in reverence at your feet.

My heart aches for the dwellings that pass their mornings and evenings

empty of all but sorrow;

Their people tear themselves away from them — the face of the

broad earth before them — toward the far-off goal,

As birds tear themselves from the garden,

startled by the withering of the roses,

Or as gazelles shy away from a pool

that the wolf has come down to, seeking to drink.

They forsook it, its water and its air —

they could not bear the disgrace of sitting idle in it;

And can a bird savor the purity of the

sky and the wind while it lies in chains?

They bade it farewell — tears filling their eyes

at parting, and fire filling their hearts —

And if the deaf could hear a voice,

they would have cried to the deaf steamships: Turn back!

Were it not for my dread of madness,

I would have flung the reins from my head

And ridden after what I love — and how often

have I spurned the words of one who forbade me!

And gone out stumbling, heedless,

never done with the love of fair women.

I have wasted away, save for a last breath

in the soul, held prisoner by hopes.

O you who blame me for youthful folly,

leave me be — your case is not my case.

You have never met, from the sorrow of love,

what I have met on account of Inan.

How can you give me back a heart

that has gone as the stake in the wager?

A heart that, whenever I charge it

with other than what it loves, defies me.

I have plunged into the depths of passion

and drunk the clear wine of the jars,

And women drenched in perfume came down

from the chambers of paradise.

From youth I drank with them

a cup that tied my tongue.

They came in from the gate of al-Rusafa

like beautiful statues.

And I say to one whom passion

has called as it has called me:

Take your fill of your desire in song

and the cup, and turn away from time.

Let nothing occupy you but what

you love — for all of life must perish.