54 – Abū Zakariyyā al-Khathʿamī told me; Ahmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAlī ibn Suwayd ibn Manjūf narrated to us; he said: I heard Abū ʿUbaydah say: Sulaymān ibn ʿAlī said to Ruʾbah, “Abū al-Jaḥḥāf, how much of your virility is left?”

He replied, “It still stretches out but has no firmness; if I try to thrust with it, it simply retreats.”

Sulaymān asked, “Have you put that into verse?”

He answered, “I have,” and he recited, in the rajaz metre:

If a perfectly straight spear-shaft of reed,
or one of the finest cedar lances we hone,
were made to endure what I have endured,
it too would groan.
Whoever is pampered by the passing nights
ends up unkempt and rough;
come morning, after those nights,
he wakes already worn and spent.

Sulaymān laughed and said, “You and I are cast in the same mould.”