[When you told us our glances, soft, timid, and mild,]

Translated from the Arabic by Joseph Dacre Carlyle 

When you told us our glances, soft, timid, and mild,
      Could occasion such wounds in the heart,
Can ye wonder that yours, so ungovern’d and wild,
      Some wounds to our cheeks should impart?

The wounds on our cheeks, are but transient, I own,
      With a blush they appear and decay;
But those on the heart, fickle youths, ye have shewn
      To be even more transient than they.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 15, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.