Death has ever been the constant lot of his loved ones, while the very sight of him is still my daily affliction. (1)

Ibn al-Aʿrābī said:
“The most consummate poet of all is Abu Nuwas, as in his words:

I wrapped myself against the age beneath the shadow of its wing;
my eye beholds the age, yet the age does not behold me.

Were you to ask the days about me, they would not know;
and if you inquired where I dwell, they would know nothing of my place.” (2)

Abu al-ʿAtāhiyah said:
“I have composed twenty thousand lines on zuhd (ascetic renunciation), yet I would gladly trade them all for the three verses Abu Nuwas wrote.” Those verses, engraved upon his grave, read:

O Nuwasi, show reverence—or change—or bear with patience.
If an age has saddened you, it has delighted you far more.
O you of many sins, Allah’s pardon is greater than your sin. (3)

Among Abu Nuwas’s panegyrics for one of the princes are the lines:

Allah brought him into being, and none searching or inquiring could find his like;
and it is no marvel for Allah to gather the whole world in a single man. (4)

They also recited to Sufyan ibn ʿUyaynah these verses of Abu Nuwas:

No passion exists without a cause—
from that cause it begins and from it branches out.

A veiled maiden has bewitched my heart;
her face is masked in sheer beauty.

She adorned herself, and Beauty, standing before her, chose and selected what to give;
so she wore its rarest marvels and even reclaimed some of what it grants.

If I were to return to that once more for her sake, no other motive would restrain her.

What I once treated as jest has turned to earnest;
many a grave matter has been drawn forth by play. (5)

Ibn ʿUyaynah remarked, “I believe in the One who created her.”