Original content

English translation

A lover who was heartsick from dread of the beloved and, from fear of the rival, had his foot caught in stone, used to wish for the day when that smooth-faced youth would grow a beard and cast the conceit of beauty out of his head, so that I might be in his service without bashfulness and take my ease in his company without ceremony. I heard that when the hair came up on his face and the freshness of that boy's beauty came to an end, he too, like the others, sat down from the road of longing for him and closed his eyes to the sight of him. They said to him: This is the opposite of what you used to say. He replied: How was I to know that this quarry would flee at a single breath, and that this snare would snap at a single hair. I have read in the lexicon that 'rish' (beard) means 'feather' before the learned expounder of words; but that feather by which, toward the nest of nonexistence, the bird of beauty takes its flight. The luster of your beauty has departed, O boy; seek no verdure from a withered sapling. Your green down has been darkened by blackness; wash the word of beauty's conceit from your heart. The one or two hairs that have sprung from your chin have made you equal to grey-haired old men.