هو الحب كم للحب من سطوة السحرِ

It is love—how potent is the magic of love! When it settles in a heart, it rules supreme over all affairs.

It has a bird that spread its wing one day, and journeyed wherever it wished without tether or captivity.

Sometimes it ascends to the highest peaks, and sometimes it plunges to the lowest depths.

Love always possesses a shifting flavor, holding countless measures of both sweetness and bitterness.

Ask every experienced lover among us, and he will tell you of passion's chilling frosts and glowing embers.

Among love's overwhelming strokes are fatal ones, like that which drove Qays down to the grave.

Love has many colors: there is the instinctual passion, and there is the chaste 'Udhri love.

Among them is our love for the dearest of our kin, for whom we spend precious wealth without stint.

Among them is the love of mother, sister, and father—surpassing even how Khansa' wailed over Sakhr.

Among them is love of the homeland, a sacred obligation for which every free youth sacrifices his soul.

Among them is the love of a lofty, winged art that thrills the soul like a coursing electrical current.

Yet the most beautiful of arts is a composed poem, despite the charms of painting, melody, and prose.

Instead, worthless scribbling has rushed forth against mankind like a torrential flood and river.

It has adopted its own Al-Lat and Al-Uzza, while Hubal swaggers about in falsehood and disbelief.

Alas for pretentious, counterfeit poetry that persists endlessly in silliness and absurdity.

To corrupt the tastes of the young and ruin them—that is the plotted goal, if only we understood.

I have studied Western literature since my youth, drinking deep from both metered verse and free.

Yet I realized that in blindly imitating it, we merely regurgitate nonsense bearing no relation to poetry.

Love has other forms besides desire for a maiden, art, homelands, or glittering gold.

The greatest kind of passion is devotion to faith—a love that alone avails on the Hour of Gathering.

Seeking knowledge is a form of passion that God urges upon us in His decisive scripture.

That passion coursed through my blood and I nursed upon it, spending my days among parchment and ink.

I parted from my children, family, and homeland, sacrificing my precious youth and dearest treasures.

And here I have attained fifty years of age, yet my scholarly steed still gallops along its paths.

I thank my Lord that He has always honored me during hardships with His sustaining aid.

He supported me in every branch of knowledge I pursued, and crowned my technological research with triumph.

Within it I constantly proclaim that our greatest treasure is humanity, not oil within the well.

I possess one wing for the sciences and another for poetic creation, so that I may soar like an eagle.

When I summoned the muses of poetry, they donned silk and rubies for me and approached in joy.

It warms my heart today to see leaders who honor the people of science, research, and thought.

Foremost among them is a generous, esteemed Sheikh who holds boundless love in the people's hearts.

A champion among them, a wise literary statesman who appreciates those who strive and create with patience.

He draws men of excellence close in every gathering, recognizing those of true talent and worth.

A master of poetry whose peer cannot be overtaken, seen rich in spirit flying upon his thoroughbred.

They came to us to patronize a symposium for culture, science, and learning more precious than pearls.

So greetings from me to the champions of our gathering, who stitched the long night together with the dawn.

To those who presented every literary gem to science, and perfumed the soil of the Emirates with fragrance.

Ah, how sweet is the harvest after they spent long years in cultivation and sowing.

And our final prayer is that praise belongs to God, to whom the revolving spheres hymn praise and gratitude.