O camel-driver

O camel-driver, turn aside at Sal‘ and halt by the bán tree of al-Mudarraj,
And call to them, imploring their pity and grace, 'O my princes, have ye any consolation?'
At Ráma, between an-Naqá and Ḥájir, is a girl enclosed in a howdah.
Oh, her beauty—the tender maid! Her fairness gives light like lamps to one travelling in the dark.
She is a pearl hidden in a shell of hair as black as jet,
A pearl for which reflection dives and remains unceasingly in the deeps of that ocean.
He who looks upon her deems her to be a gazelle of the sand-hills because of her neck and the loveliness of her gestures.
’Tis as though she were the morning sun in Aries, crossing the degrees of the zodiac at their farthest height.
If she lifts her veil or uncovers her face, she holds cheap the rays of the bright dawn.
I called to her, between the guarded pasture and Ráma, 'Who will help a man that alighted at Sal‘ in good hope?
Who will help a man lost in a desert, dismayed, confounded in his wits, miserable?
Who will help a man drowned in his tears, intoxicated by the wine of passion for those well-set teeth?
Who will help a man burned by his sighs, distraught by the beauty of those spacious eyebrows?'
The hands of Love have played at their will with his heart, and he commits no sin in that which he seeks.