462 – Zayd ibn Akhzam narrated to us; he said: Muḥāḍir narrated to us; ⦗199⦘ he said: al-Aʿmash narrated to us from Mujāhid, who said: “Not a single day leaves this world without declaring, ‘Praise be to Allah who has removed me from it and will never return me to it.’”

Maḥmūd ibn al-Ḥasan al-Warrāq said—in baḥr al-ṭawīl metre:
A youth yearns for a long stay in this life, though he knows full well that all staying ends in passing away.
Each increase in his body is a decrease in his span, and no true growth accompanies the shrinking of one’s days.
Whenever a day is folded up, it folds part of him with it; when evening falls, another evening folds him still more.
Day and night are forever new, yet nothing abides beneath their sway, and when all else has perished, they too shall not remain.

Al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān recited to me a poem that a man of Quraysh had chanted—in baḥr al-munsariḥ:
Night and day take turns over a brief life brimming with hope;
Whatever they make fresh, they soon wear threadbare; whatever they raise aloft, they bring down; whatever they lengthen, they do not truly prolong.