61 – Al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān narrated to me, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bakr al-Sahmī, who said: One day my father looked into a mirror, contemplating the grey hairs in his beard and weeping. Someone asked him, “What makes you weep?” He replied, “Grey hair is the herald of death.”

62 – And one of the scholars recited to me these [baḥr al-wāfir] verses:

Prepare for your soul before death arrives,
For grey hair is death’s advance warning.
The departure is truly at hand, so strive
To set down your saddle in the abode everlasting.