and lions whose very dens (1) are the tawny shafts of tall spears—
whenever the kings of the jungle set out to wrestle in battle.
For I stand firm in judgment and clear in mind
whenever the war-caller lifts his voice.
I plunge my lifeblood into the surging seas of death
when they boil up, and I feel no fear of wounds.
How many a night have I kept sleepless watch,
tracking the stars and waiting for dawn!
How often, across a broad, trackless plain, have my horse and camel
gone forth and returned in the blazing heat of noon!
For the sake of your eyes, amid the blinding dust, I endure what I endure,
holding my ground in the fiercest moments, never retreating.

Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā (2) ibn Hibat Allah, Abū Naṣr al-Nakhkhās (3) al-Wāsiṭī.
He wrote to al-Sibt the following verses (4):
[in the Ṭawīl metre]
A lady said to me, once I had grown old and reached
eighty years: “Live on like this, remain, and be safe!
Keep on, inhale the breath of life, for it is
sweeter than a house in Ṣaʿda, however dark it be.”
I answered her:
“My excuse is plain for you—
it lies in a line of Zuhayr; so understand and learn:
‘I am weary of the burdens of life; and whoever lives
eighty years will, without fail, grow weary.’” (5)

[Then the year 614 AH began.]
On the third of Muḥarram of that year (6) the paving of the interior of the Umayyad Mosque was completed. Al-Muʿtamid Mubāraz al-Dīn Ibrāhīm (7), the governor of Damascus, came and, rejoicing, laid the final slab with his own hand; it stood by the Bāb al-Ziyāda (8).