Still lost am I in valleys dark with night,Woe to my soul from hope's deceiving light!
I bury sorrows in the grave of death,And strip my grief for verse's living breath.
I heard the bird sing out and make it plain,And saw the moon shine full without a stain.
I heard the night complain in moaning tone,Though light flows on in splendour overthrown.
I heard the wretched poet sing his pain,In longing and in weeping's ceaseless rain.
His verses rang, then vanished from the ear,A flash that could not long remain or near.
Would I knew which soul does not still yearnFor every hope though time's harsh wheels turn.
God guard the man who rises high aboveTrials and tribulations' testing love.
What people suffer fills my heart with grief,Torment and hardship beyond belief.
Alas my soul—what good in overturning?What use when our false world keeps burning?
Grief pierced me when it shrouded all mankind,And made the universe like darkness blind.
Whenever I surveyed with searching eye,I found but darkness upon darkness nigh.
Arab lands wander like a fugitive,Like dove that flees the hunter's will to live.
Now stepping as the infant steps with care,Then like the startled gazelle unaware.
O thou whose era links two epochs' stream,Between dark night and dawn's awakening gleam.
Thou art to me a crown of glory bright,All good and loyalty are in thy light.
We shall forget the cups we drained in woe,We shall forget the hardship that we know.
We shall rekindle suns we lost before,To meet again the radiance we adore.
We shall anchor on a shore of golden sand,We shall rejoice to life's own music's band.
We shall inhale the fragrance of those shades,We shall live on in hope that never fades.
We shall ascend above the people's dreams,Where we shall dwell in quietness that gleams.
Where we escape fate's clutching, cruel hand,And see the world by peace's gentle wand.
We shall sing all our lives like birds on wing,And sleep at night in slumber's deepening.
Where neither phantom nor revolt shall rise,But life entirely love before our eyes.
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