Processions glide past (1) while every eye is riveted upon them, fixed upon the blessed king whose very omen is auspicious.
Within a single man he has assembled a moon upon his crown and, on his coat of mail, a lion whose claws drip blood.
Pleasant are his manners, mighty the truths he embodies; the pebbles could be counted sooner than his noble deeds. (2)

Among his verses are the following:
“O you in whom I seek refuge for all that I hope to attain, and to whom I flee from all that I fear:
No people can set a bone that you have broken, nor can they break a bone that you have set.” (3)

It has reached me that our teacher, the scholar Abū al-‘Abbās Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him), used to censure al-Mutanabbī for such hyperbole, saying, “Speech of this sort befits only the august majesty of Allah—exalted is He.”
The scholar Shams al-Dīn Ibn al-Qayyim told me that he heard the Shaykh remark, “I sometimes recite these two lines while in prostration.”

Among the poetry cited by the ḥāfiẓ Abū al-Qāsim Ibn ‘Asākir in his biography of al-Mutanabbī are these lines:
“Did you look upon me with the eye of one in need of you, and so abandoned me, hurling me from a cliff?
You are not the one to blame; I alone am blameworthy, for I presented my needs to other than the Creator.” (4)

Qāḍī Ibn Khallikān said, “These two lines are not found in his Dīwān, yet the ḥāfiẓ al-Kindī transmitted them from him with an authentic chain.”

He also said:
“If you plunge into the pursuit of a lofty honor, be not content with anything beneath the stars.
For the taste of death in a paltry cause (5) is the same as the taste of death in a great one. (6)”

And he said:
“I am not one to seek a bribe for love—ugly (7) is a passion for which a recompense is hoped. (8)”