The noonday sun has never outshone it in the least—
except that youth itself is not to endure.

Some transmitters added:
Many a noble forbearance has been squandered by poverty,
and many an ignorance concealed by ease and luxury. (1)

Then he cried out at the top of his voice from the fortress of Fāriʿ, “O sons of Qaylah!”
When they gathered around, they said, “Woe to you—what is the matter with you?”
He replied, “I have composed a qasīdah the like of which no Arab has ever uttered.”
When he recited it to them they said, “Was it for this that you summoned us?”
He answered, “And how can anyone whose breast is burning with anguish be expected to keep silent?” (2)

Al-Aṣmaʿī and others narrated—from Ibn Abī al-Zinād, from his father, from Khārijah ibn Zayd—who said:
“Singing used to take place at wedding gatherings, and none of the frivolity seen today was present. There was an assembly among Banū Nubayṭ in which were Ḥassān ibn Thābit, his son—who by then was blind—and two slave-girls chanting:
‘Look, my two companions, at the Gate of Damascus: can you see
beneath the Balqāʾ plain anyone at all? (3)
The scruffy herds when they set off from the
prison between the dunes and the hillside. (4)’
Ḥassān began to weep—those verses were his own—and his son kept saying to the girl, “Recite more.”
And among what she sang was: