And Awareness Is the Opening of the Road...

The sublime ode which the poet composed for the celebration of the "al-Rawda al-Fayha'" School, attached to the Women's Child Welfare Association in Tripoli

Hail Arabism in the bowers of its beauties, their faces unveiled upon their good works,
Pure of hem—the fragrance of "al-Rawda al-Fayha'" rises from their robes—
Like the houris in their loveliness, the ornament of a verdant paradise bending tenderly over its children,
Bearing the rising generation in their palms, giving it to drink the water of glory from their milk:
Every downy fledgling straying on its wing, as though it crawled upon their eyelids,
Merry, playful, relishing his lessons as the bee finds sweet the gathering of her orchard,
Or like buds that have flowered in a spreading tree, the breezes playing among its branches.
Learning is to the young in their prime as the sun to the seedlings in their springtime;
And the noblest thing the little ones have learned by heart is a message in whose title they read the love of homelands.
That love is the tie of the land to its people, the firmest bond in the garment of its being;
But for it, the dweller would not drink from the sullied water, nor the far exile toss upon its fires.
The earth has allotted us nothing but a fold among the wolves, in the very thicket of the wolf;
Generation after generation wrests survival from the muzzle of the fates in their calamities.
And today youth shoulders an ordeal—the carrying of mountains is lighter than the carrying of it.
Can the schools stretch out a hand to it, and graduate heroes upon its field?
With firmness of character we build a state for whose building the arm of learning proved too short.
The army of philosophers encamped among us does not warm itself at war's fire, but only at its smoke.
Yesterday the land appealed to its protectors: who marched for the frontiers? Who for their keeping?
And a stricken neighbor called to us for rescue—ask her what succor came from her neighbors...

*

Tripoli has wrestled with time, and set her steps in accord with the march of her age;
Here are her noble women, loosening her tether with fingers of gentleness and tenderness.
Clear is her spring for those who come to draw learning; abundant upon the gathering is the bounty of her helpers.
To glory inherited she has joined its path—a Ghassanid chain reaching to her Lebanon..
A glory that clasps the sea in its right hands, while the desert clasps it in her faith.

*

O neighbor of "al-Mina," its sands, were they given the choice, would return to their dunes...
But the shade of the cedar above you is spreading, and the cedar consoles the birds for their nests.
All one, O daughter of Arabism, are her plain and her mountains, so long as you are in her arms..
Love stands above justice—hold fast to it: the fruits are hostage to their season.
Had your Lord willed to make a nation one, He would have granted it the turn of healing from its rancors.
And awareness is the opening of the road—enough for us that the thoroughbreds are on the track of their wager.