You claim that a man’s years are straitened—
mere extinction for one beset by nights of severance;
if what you have told me is false,
then you have escaped as al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām escaped:
he left the loved ones he should have fought for
and fled upon the head of a bay mount and its bridle,
abandoning the fine, fleet she-camels in a barren waste,
pounding packed earth strewn with gravel and stone.
With that flight he filled the twin passes with dust until they reddened,
while his dear ones lay in the very worst of stations.
His father’s sons and his clan were in the melee
where God granted victory to the people of Islam.
War ground them down while God’s decree was carried out—
a conflagration whose blaze was stoked with fuel.
Had God not willed, and events not run their course,
they would have been left as carrion for the beasts,
trampled beneath predatory paws.
Some were captured, their bonds pulled tight
by a hawk who hovers amid the spear-points;
others lay sprawled, unable to answer any call
until the lofty standards themselves were cast down—
branded with manifest shame and humiliation
as shining swords drove on every valiant heart,
wielded by a radiant champion whose lineage never shames him,
a noble, resolute warrior.
White blades—whenever they meet hard iron they cleave it,
like lightning flashing beneath every cloud.

Ibn Hishām says (1): We have omitted three verses at the end of this poem in which he became exceedingly coarse. [kāmil meter]

Al-Ḥārith ibn Hishām—the brother of Abū Jahl ʿAmr ibn Hishām—replied:

My people know full well why I held back from fighting them—
until they rewarded my foal with a foam-flecked chestnut steed.
I understood that if I fought but a single man I would be killed,
and my death would not injure the enemy in the least;
so I withdrew from them, though my loved ones were among them,
hoping they might escape the punishment of a ruinous day.

Hassān also said (3):

O Ḥār, you lamented when no lament was due,
in the hour of tumult when pedigrees are put to proof:
mounting a nimble, loose-reined she-camel,
swift as a she-wolf, long in the stride of her flanks,
while your people—whom you left to do the fighting—were behind you;
you sought deliverance when it was no time for flight.
Why did you not turn back for your mother’s son when he lay
transfixed by spears, his weapons helplessly lost?
The King hastened to destroy his host,
branding them with lasting shame and grievous torment.

Hassān also said (4): [wāfir meter]