He also said (1):

[khafīf]
When the times are in turmoil, the lowborn rise high
Until calamity spreads and no refuge is nigh.
And so it is with water: left still, it is clear,
But once it is stirred, from its depths the dregs appear.

He likewise composed:

[khafīf]
I have turned away from the world, though none can forsake
What clings to the hopes and wishes they make.
Yet whenever (2) I avert my face from her lure,
She flings (3) me back into her turbulent sea for sure.
They take light from me while I perish alone—
As though (4) I were but a dying wick, faintly shown.

He died (5) in this same year, in the month of Dhu al-Hijjah, at the age of seventy-two. A great multitude attended his funeral, and he was buried near Mūsā ibn Jaʿfar.

The judge Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Rajāʾ (6) ibn Zuhayr ibn ʿAlī al-Baṭāʾiḥī came to Baghdad, where he studied jurisprudence and heard hadith. He then stayed for a time at Rahbat Mālik ibn Ṭawq, studying under Abū ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Nabīh the specialist in farāʾiḍ (laws of inheritance). Later he served for a period as qāḍī of al-Gharrāf (7). He was a jurist of letters, and he related that his teacher Abū ʿAbd Allah ibn al-Nabīh once recited his own verses in opposition to al-Ḥarīrī concerning the two lines (8) of which al-Ḥarīrī had boasted that no third could equal them. Those lines are:

[sarīʿ]
Brand a mark whose traces bring lasting praise,
And thank the giver, though the gift be but a sesame grain.
Shun deceit whenever you are able,
For honor and noble rank are never gained through guile.