I have stopped rising to greet the friend who visits me,
and my only sin is the length of my years.
Should they themselves reach half of ninety in their tenth decade,
they will see that I have a valid excuse for not standing.

[We have already cited earlier the verses composed on the execution of ʿUmārah al-Yamanī under the Ṣalāḥī rule in 599 AH; they are unsurpassed in power, eloquence, and word-play. Ibn al-Sāʿī, in his biographical entry in his “History,” records other fine poems, among them these lines in praise of al-Malik al-Muẓaffar (1) Taqī al-Dīn ʿUmar ibn Shāhanshāh] (2):

[in the ṭawīl metre]
The trysts with graceful maidens were once more bountiful and more fragrant (3),
and the age of intimacy was brighter and more delightful.
O nights when youth itself was my finest advocate—
they are gone, and pastime no longer shows so clear a path.
Grey hairs have appeared, dispersing the greed of youth,
and reason now condemns what it once approved.
Those carefree days have fled as though I had never known them;
with them I would unveil the radiant face (4) of bliss.
Never did I swagger, the cloak of youth trailing behind me,
its hem drawn in self-admiration and display.
I sparred with a slender, soft-waisted maiden,
and courted another, sweet of lip and dark of eye.
Their nights slipped by in such sweetness that,
because they were so brief, they seemed (5) to snatch away the darkness.
If now I spend the evening with a heart distressed and sorrowful (6),
I still quaff an old, pearl-white draught—the pathway of passion (7).
Alone—yet enraptured by the grace that is mine (8)—
I am hounded and alarmed by foes of virtue.
O Lord of my faith (9), I have gladdened it and it has gladdened me;
I have brightened it with righteous deeds and made it yet more radiant.
O Lord of every gathering I have attended, of every noble soul I have met,
and of every adversary I subdued until he stammered (10):
I shattered, by my merit, his deficiency and left him
with grief in his heart and a bone in his throat.
My praise, in the ears of those who envy me—
gathering virgin meanings and weaving them together—
is like the sword of Taqī al-Dīn: against every renegade
it cleaves the fully-armoured champion down to the ground.