86 – He said: My father informed me; he said: Abū al-Walīd al-Kilābī recited:

I offer women a gift—
one that will satisfy both their elite and their witnesses.

When you meet a girl of ten, know that
scant indeed is the bounty a skittish fledgling will show.

⦗79⦘
You extend a favor to her, yet she puts you to trial;
she strikes her own cheeks whenever you ask for more.

But by my life, the maiden of twenty is my delight:
she is the one with whom I sport and whom I desire.

The thirty-year-old—none surpasses her—
is perfection itself: her bloom is still fresh, her stem unbent.

Happy is the man who has a forty-year-old;
of women, the finest are those of lofty stature and tempered mettle.

In the fifty-year-old there remain many benefits;
what an excellent possession from which a youth may profit.

At sixty she rises with strength;
her pillar is firm in both wealth and in her Islam.

Should you meet a daughter of seventy years,
say your farewells and grant her the disappointment she is bound to reap.

The eighty-year-old, whose obstinate old age has spread,
has a pulse that now totters and sways.

The ninety-year-old is the most abject of them all,
yet she imagines that every single person is her servant.

And if she should reach a full hundred and you visit her,
you will find her dwelling shabby, its pillar now bowed.