The Tormented Soul

You withered like the garden flower, yearning, spent,
Changing from its colors to give it increase;
When death came upon you, you were as one lulled asleep,
Until that with which you healed all hurt was ended.
Would that their stronghold had been razed before —
For what invention did you not perfect, after
Some turned Arab, professing the creed aloud,
And some cast anchor in Jerusalem, proclaiming revolt,
And that the swarthy Rum should spend themselves in the fray —
The Rum were never anything but their kings;
They painted me in the image of filth, as they are,
So whenever you rescued me from their arrows,
You would come down from the height of heaven in a boat
Wherein volcanoes of fire were set ablaze;
Beirut claps her hands in wonder for him —
How many little ones had their flesh cut away,
How many youths went off, the victims of greed;
So you bore, in your striving, hardship and distress,
You who never shut an eye for an instant,
Yet disorder has vipers that fell in love with
You lived in this world an outcast and a striver;
A torn heart yearns toward your resting place.
But there is a morning you never met with a smile —
Who ever saw before a grave to which answered
Tears pouring down upon it at eventide?
Brother of towering resolve, who now shall claim the bounties that
Glorious deeds that never wear out with time — only

And you who were ever a friend to the flowers,
A fragrance turning sickness and death aside;
You sink away and wake, then rise the victor;
Its spices were the coveted prize of foes.
They have never ceased to be lowest of peoples in their ways;
They fell upon us, brandishing their blades;
And some drew off to the lands of emigration, plundering;
Judas would fain have been a man of war,
And the Rum become the captives of strangers —
They were but thieves who plundered the ships;
Their weapon is mesmerism, murdering the absent.
You fight against thousands and work wonders,
Becoming now a wheel, and now scorpions,
Pouring red clamor down upon the villains,
While Lebanon witnesses the age's marvels.
How many maidens have met calamity,
How many a father tasted death, and gladly;
You never feared the talons of the guilty.
For a whole year you withstood the foxes
Whose blaze would hide its designs within its passion.
You outdid the morning rain-clouds in bounty and gifts,
A banner of reform pressing its demands.
It is night; the star has left it, reproachful;
Its sides console the absent one with song.
Night darkened, and the stars poured down upon it,
Consoling hopes while they lament the virtues
That every usurper of the right pretended not to know.