ستأتيك مني إن بقيت قصائد — Farazdaq

If I live, poems from me will come to you,

whose artful composition every poet will fall short of matching.

Through them, ancestral honors shine when they are heard,

when each person's merit in action is reckoned.

And you are a man descended from the loins of Murrah, which

even the reach of one stretching high cannot attain.

They gave your father as hostage on their behalf, for his superiority

over his people—and truth's features are plain.

Had they known one more faithful in sparing their blood,

and more clearly meritorious in those noble deeds,

for them than your chosen father, they would have shielded themselves with him

from Kisra's spearheads on the day the tribes gave hostages.

You surpassed the sons of Shayban in excellence and eminence,

as Shayban surpassed Bakr ibn Wa'il.

And Bakr had surpassed all of Rabi'ah,

through lofty deeds and glorious exploits of old.

You defended Ma'add on the day of Kisra, son of Hurmuz,

with a decisive blow that straightened all that leaned awry.

You triumphed at Dhi Qar, and its condition has remained,

to this day, that of one humbled and diminished.

On Dhi Qar's pebbly plain, on the morning there came to you

tribes of a massed host, tribe following tribe.

And yours was a blessing whose bounty you spread

to every barefoot and shod man of Ma'add.

Al-Hamurz's vanguard knows that you

jealously guard your wives on the day of battle.

To the glory of noble deeds and lofty honors you were raised

by houses to which honor turns when refuge is sought.

Among them is the house of al-Hawfazan, through which

Bakr blunts the points of the archer's arrows.

And the house of al-Muthanna, who hamstrung the elephant by force,

at Babylon, when Babylon's sovereignty lay in Persia.