285 – Abu Bakr b. Abī al-Naḍr narrated to us; he said: Saʿīd b. ʿĀmir narrated to us; he said: Jaʿfar b. Sulaymān narrated to us; he said: Mālik b. Dīnār said, “We have struck a truce with the love of this world: none of us enjoins the other, none forbids the other, and Allah will not leave us on such a footing. Would that I knew which of Allah’s punishments is going to befall us!”
A certain sage-poet said:
We have rested our hearts in the dwelling, the dwelling of delusion,
and its pleasures have cast their spell upon us.
We take no heed of its marvels,
nor of the shifting turns of its affairs.
We vie within it while its days
come and go among us with their afflictions.
Do none of its living reflect,
and draw a lesson from its dead?

A man of Quraysh said:
Every living soul, though he savor a life of ease,
will one day be driven to extinction by two relentless guides.
Where are the people of discernment—the sons of ʿAbd Shams,
the noble chieftains from the Banū Marwān? ⦗139⦘
Rain-bringing lions in drought and in war,
whenever the two battle-lines closed in.
Men who, when they descended upon the cavalry,
seemed spirits swooping upon eagles.
Time set its two blades upon them,
and the twin epochs struck them in succession.
They departed as though they had never been,
while the nights sport with humankind.
Ease your grief—for over every creature, some day,
the two raging winds of time will blow.